Lost Brothers
by Jonas Grant
Summary: A human populated world, with an history going back as far as the Earth's, is found by the Migrant Fleet, thus being thrown into the galaxy's struggles, but when a people has been at war for all its recorded history, how can it do anything else? Set shortly before the end of GoW 3 and ME 3. Supposed to be a simple draft of an idea, but it somehow became my most popular fic...
1. Chapter 1

**Sera**

**Position Unknown**

**Locust Processing Barge**

**16 AE**

You ever have a nightmare you can't wake up from? One so unpleasant you're ready to just end it right there and not sleep for the rest of the night?

You ever realize that nightmare is real and you can't end it?

I never expected it to happen to me, though I certainly didn't hope for it, yet here I am, with hooks piercing the flesh of my back and shoulders, hanging in the darkness with pain flaring all over my body.

It's the sort of sharp pain that makes you shy away from the source on the double, yet I can't move, not even on the single, or it gets worst, and it just won't stop. All I could do is scream. I did that plenty up until now, but I it seems the pain has subsided enough for me to know that would just attract attention on myself, which I really don't care for right now. I like not having a Beserker raping my face…

There's another prisoner in a nearby room, somewhere to the right, screaming his lungs out as they do things to him I'd rather not think about.

To the left, the rustling of chains and groans of pain tell a similar story; another piece of meat is hanging in here… Or they're coming for me.

"Hey, someone alive out there?" The call is barely a whimper, my voice hoarse from screaming so much.

I barely remember screaming, though the reason is obvious. I don't even remember how I got here.

"Y…Yes…" The voice is female and that seems to hit me harder for some reason.

Dad always said women must be protected and respected, not just because men are stronger and that kind of bullshit, but also because only girls can give birth and given that the process of continuing the human race is such a fucking painful thing to them, we owe them some god damned respect.

Funny thing is, he never seemed against women soldiers and neither am I, but I guess I'm a bit of a sexist from all the chivalry bullshit they fed me at the Academy…

"Are you…" What? Tied up? Hung to the roof like meat? Shit… "Are you okay?"

"No… I am not…"

Great, now my brain thought she said she wasn't strapped up and stopped dulling the pain to wake me up in wait for my imminent rescue.

Should have stayed in bed this morning; that day ain't really turning out to be a blast…

**_Eight hours earlier_**

**_Stranded settlement _****Hole**

**_Southern Coast_**

_I walk down the street under the rain, pure rage flowing through my veins._

_I don't see the debris or Locust corpses. I just see the antique street and a lot of red._

_Rage, when unhindered, makes no distinction between right and wrong, friend or enemy, which is why I am walking down the street right now, away from the makeshift HQ_

_Benjamin and I used to run out in weathers like that all the time, getting ourselves fit for military service. Ben always thought speed was better that raw muscles and tried to keep a balance between strength and mobility._

_Clay used to laugh at our effort, saying we were scrawny and would always be._

_Half right there, big bro, Benji stayed lean and thin; I grew arms big enough to strangle a Grub and did so more than once during the war, although my favorite hand to hand technique is to go for the eyes. It felt good, back then, getting payback for Tony. Fuck, I remember my first day on the job, almost three years ago, first time I killed a Grub; best day of my life._

_I puked for the rest of the best day of my life._

_Must have killed a hundred drones after that, maybe more, even though I lack experience with bigger kinds of Locust, I guess I qualify as a Vet now._

_The killing, fighting and current struggle for survival were the easiest way for me not to think about Tony's death, and now that Benji's gone as well, I don't know if I can hold up much longer…_

_Well, that little shithole Stranded settlement we're crashing in is gonna have a nice shipment of Locust gear as soon as the Sarge agrees to go hit the Grub camp downtown._

_I wish Tony and Benji could see me, could see Clay; we're mean motherfuckers, just like we pretended to be when we were kid and played war games…_

_Except in my case, it's still just a façade, my way of surviving this war; pretending I'm some kind of badass who's not afraid of anything. I'm not; I'm a coward, but I'm alive and that's precisely because I avoid fights when possible._

_This rage-induced daze brings me to the front gate, actually a school bus outfitted with armor plates and machine guns on the side facing outward, I tell Jaime to open the damn thing._

"_Going out for a walk, lad?" The old man asks from the shaky guard tower, his longshot hanging loose on its bandoleer._

"_Nope," I answer, looking at his blind right eye, "I'm on corpse duty, so open the damned gate…"_

_He nods and pushes a lever, causing a large rock on my left to lower itself and the bus to roll out of the way._

_It's dark in the settlement, thanks to the all the Imulsion being diverted toward vehicles and most fire being kept near the center of town, away from the wooden walls, but outside is pretty well lit, thanks to all the flaming corpses._

_Corpses duty… My job is to search all the meat out there for ammo and weapons. Sarge figures it will keep my mind off my dead bro._

_Sooner or later, I'll have to think about it though, and my gun has a massive fuck-off chainsaw on it. Things won't be overly hygienic, if you catch my drift…_

0

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**Position Unknown**

**Locust Torture Barge**

**Processing facility**

I pull hard and tears fill my vision, along with red clouds and tiny blue lightnings. There'd even the roll of thunder in my ears.

_Does it hurt soldier?_

Despite knowing Bernie's voice isn't real, I feel the need to answer, "Yes sir!"

_Are ya goin' to give up?_

There are chains riveted to the floor and holding me down, but still manage to pull myself about an inch up. The chains linked to the hooks in my back go limp, but the ones in my ankles and shin stretch the skin to tearing point.

"No." I shake myself, the tearing sensation increasing to the point it fills my whole mind like an over-inflated baloon, threatening to pop my eyes out of their sockets. Shit, my skin is tearing like a t-shirt two sizes too small and all I can think of is a balloon metaphor…

Then, it vanishes, the pain, that is, replaced by a cold and wet sensation. Hooks are out.

_Then get ta work!_

My arms are still stuck, but I got some mobility now, so time to put those aching muscles to use…

Of course, I can't just break the chains like some kind of ape; I'm tough, just not that much, instead, I pull on my left hand while keeping it limp and my thump pressed against my palm.

This is shit I've only ever seen in movies, but I'm sure I can pull it off; I can kill Grubs with my bare hands, I must be able to unhinge my own thumb.

And I better hurry up and do it, cause a door just opened right in my face and although the light is blinding me, I can tell it ain't pizza delivery… Great, now I'm hungry.

"Hominid." Something hisses from the light. I give you one guess as to just what that something is.

"Grub." I spit back, still pulling and groaning from the horrible pain. The grub thinks I'm groaning from the hooks in my back. The Grub is an idiot.

Before anything glorious or painful can happen, however, a gun goes off and blood sprays across my face, followed with a cold sensation in my chest, like I've had ground ice shoved down my throat.

Did that asshole just shoot me? What a moron, can't even kill a guy right!

"Was that supposed to hurt, asshole!?" Famous last words, huh?

The only answer I get is some cloaked figure walking up to me from the light. Too small to be Locust or Gear… Stranded?

I try to see the slim newcomer's face, but can only see a flash of purple…

What the fuck is this? Cuddlybear rescue op?

"Nice diversion." The same girl as earlier congratulates.

From the looks of it, she wasn't hung on hooks or anything, just chained up and it appears she managed to free herself in a fashion much less painful than mine… Or I'm hallucinating…

An orange hologram appears around her arm and she uses it to, somehow, undo my restraints. Yeah, I'd stack my money on an hallucination.

"Why didn't the Grub get you outta that suit?" I groan, my legs giving under me.

The other isn't strong enough to keep my fat ass from crashing down and the impact is so brutal, it sends waves of pain along my whole body.

The other gasps and backs away in horror. I vaguely remember getting whipped earlier, and not in a kinky way, but my brain thankfully blanked out most of the thing, so I guess I won't be going nuts yet…

Which is a very strange thing to tell oneself, truth be told…

The other seems to hurt for me, but pain ain't so bad any… Who am I kidding? It feels like someone's whipping me with every breath I take and just getting up hurts so much it feel like I'll pass out.

My vision is red and I'm seeing a cog made out of blood right in front of me, apparently hovering in mid air.

Hallucination again, I guess. The girl gets her shit together and finally answers my question. Been so long I forgot what I asked.

"They know I'll die without it."

Sure, I guess that makes sense.

Sounds like a northerner or something, maybe Gorasni, couldn't tell for sure, only time I met those bastards was on Vectes and we were too busy killing Stranded pirates for chit chat.

Doesn't matter, she's not packing a weapon –which begs the question of what the fuck that shot was earlier- so I take upon myself to provide firepower.

The drone that cloaked lady killed –incinerated, more accurately- was packing an Hammerburst and a Boltok pistol. Bending over to pick them causes blood to trickle all along my back, but I still do, then hold out both weapons to my new pal.

She looks at them, then at me.

"Ugly fat bastard with punch or ugly skinny bastard with punch?" I ask, putting it simply. She picks the pistol and I can see she's missing two fingers.

Wonder if she was burnt or something and that's why she has to wear that weird ass suit…

Maybe she's a Grub, even, who knows.

Who cares? Move!

"By the way," I call after making sure the hallway is clear, "Name's Devon Carmine."

She stops for a second, wondering just what to answer, then speaks in a tone more questioning than anything, "Laki…"

Sure, hey, not like I care.

"Cover my back Laki," I chirp while moving on, "We're bustin' out."

I can almost _hear_ the woman cringe at the mention of my back…


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: So, I have no clue why I started this, nor where the fuck I intended it to go initially, I was just bored I guess, but right now, I just had a stroke on inspiration...**

**Robo Reader 21: Didn't know much about male Quarian, and multi-species sexual tension during gunfights is fun to write :D So long as it ain't about non-sentient beings, anyway. :S**

**Didn't read the novels, that's just how I always write, flows better ^^**

I open the cell with two rounds in the lock and a solid kick, while the girl opens the opposite one using her hologram thing.

There's a Gear in mine, wearing a completely black armor. Onyx guard. He's on the floor, motionless, glowing optics staring straight at the ceiling.

"Hey, pal," I call, kicking his feet, "Ya alive?"

No answer, not even a twitch.

Checking for a pulse is hard when the patient is wearing full battle plate, so I carefully kneel next to the guy and unlock his armor, flipping off both magnetic seals on his chest before removing the helmet.

Yah, he's dead alright. Guys looks mummified, his airtight suit having done a great job preserving his body. I don't have much time and if it were any other type of plate, I'd have given just kept on moving, but Onyx suits are the best COG gear around and I'll be damned if I'm gonna let that kind of loot pass me by.

First step is getting the under suit off that corpse; the armored plates just fall off now that the power is shut, but the skintight thing underneath is still stubbornly clinging to its former owner.

While I pull, bitch and push, I get plenty of time to think about why the fuck I was kept on the same facility as some weird ass high-tech cloaked figure and a Spec Ops. Two answers possible; I'm more important that I thought or the Locust don't have enough facilities left to separate grunts from VIPs… Or they just plain don't give a shit.

There's some kind of pressure gauge on the gauntlet, right next to a dial of sort, both shaped like gears.

I turn the dial clockwise and the suit tightens even more, so I turn it counter clockwise and the thing soon becomes as loose and easy to take off as the dress of a Jacinto whore.

Takes about five minutes for me to get geared up, despite the constant bitching of my new friend about time being short.

Once every armor plates are where they belong, I switch on the suit's power pack and watch as system diagnostics scroll across my HUD. Shit, that suit's years ahead of anything I ever got my hands; special alloy, assisted mobility, vacuum capacities… Of course, when you know Onyx guards are tasked with protecting the rich and fat members of the COG government, it's a lot less shiny…

The ID system tells me the guy was actually an important industrial, not a soldier, and he wore the suit as protection, so he could not only blend in with his guards, but be protected by the advanced armor.

Didn't fool the Locust, I guess… Or maybe his whole guard got massacred and he surrendered.

I pick the Hammerburst off the floor and stretch a bit. The suit has automated painkiller and meds injectors, so my back feels numb and tickles a bit, but nothing more, thankfully. It is also tight enough to prevent my skin from tearing apart.

"Okay, Laki, how do we get outta here?" I ask the woman, who seemed just about to drag me out by force a second ago.

She looks at her glowy orange thing and points down the corridor, stepping out of the way so I can go first.

Feels good to have some armor, even though it was looted off a dead guy who's life it failed to save…

I shrug it off and keep moving down the corridor, weapon at the ready.

We take a right and find even more cells, but I wasted all the time we could spare, so I just knock on doors, calling: "COG! Sound off!"

No response.

The place ends with whatever passes for a door with the Locusts; barely more that scrap metal with a lock and a handle…

Laki shoots something and I spin on the spot, checking to make sure it's dead.

It's a Mauler, some gray-skinned walking tank that will fuck up your skull with some kind of flail that goes boom… Never fought one myself, but heard plenty of stories…

This one sure ain't dead.

"It's not dying, is it?" Laki asks, backing away slowly as the Mauler hisses something threatening with lots of S in it.

"Nope." And with that, we open fire at the thing while slowly backing up toward the door.

The Mauler covers behind its shield and keep moving forward. "CHAAAARGGE…"

Fuck, no way we can beat this! I don't even have a spare clip!

My instinct tells me to turn tail and run for it, but I know I can't find my way around without Laki, so I tap her shoulder and jerk my thumb backward.

"Get the door, I'll hold it!" It's a prison, the door's bound to be locked.

I stop backing down and try not to shake as the thing takes two steps in my direction.

If that flail of his hit me, it'll cave my armor in, crush my rib cage and burn the skin off my bones… Guess I shouldn't get hit, then.

Damn shit, I ain't Marcus Fenix, I'm no war hero, I'm a grunt, a Marksmen, I shouldn't even be going near bastards like that!

My hand goes up to my chest, where my Commando knife would be, had it not been taken from me. Don't know what I expected to do with it, pick its teeth, maybe?

Instead, I raise my gun and shoot it in the legs. Not all that effective, but hey, better that shooting the fucking rocket-proof shield.

"Kheela, degenerate cavemen couldn't use electronic locks!"

Not reassuring. A peek back doesn't tell me much, as all I can make out in the darkness is that horange glowy thingy around the girl's arm.

Give things like that to everyone and you can throw some wicked rave parties…

The grub retracts his shield to chargesme and I squeeze four shots in its face, blood spraying the cieiling and floor; even though it doesn't cause much damage, getting shot in the face tends to make people feel dizzy, the beast is no exception; it stumbles a bit before resuming its charge, all the while getting peppered by my Hammerburst.

It feels like I'm shooting a barreling rock with a BB gun, sure I'm leaving some scars, but that ain't gonna save my flat ass.

"Yo, neon girl," I call my still cursing friend, "hide in one of the cells, I got a plan!"

Do I? Well, first I need her out of the way, cause I'm only eight feet away from the door and the thing's four feet ahead of me, bringing its flail to bear. One thing my brain thinks is funny is the fact the corridor is so small the Mauler barely has enough room to flail his bomb; not sure how it's relevant, but my mind is telling me that I'm an idiot for being afraid.

Laki enters one of the cells and throws her Boltok to me. Seems about the say something real teary eying when I shut the door on her.

"Wanna dance, motherfucker?" I spit, holding a gun in both hands.

Bernie wouldn't approve, but what the fuck, all I can do is piss it off anyway!

I keep firing into the fat fucker –who just hides behind his shield, laughing- , tearing off tiny bits of flesh, digging small holes in its leathery skin and otherwise not doing damage until both guns run out, soon reaching wherethe point my back is pressed on the door. Things are blurring around me and my HUD screams that I'm going into system shock from the intense stress and blood loss.

There's pressure on my ears and I feel like I'm in one of those nightmares where the monster is closing in on you, but you can't keep your eyes open.

An impact tells me my legs just gave and the Mauler is now the only thing I see. Well, fuck, my family is cursed or some shit, three brothers killed in three years? I call bullshit!

The thing utters a "DDIIEE!" and swing its flail.


	3. Chapter 3

Voices, speaking in a language I can't comprehend. Maybe it's English, but I'm so tired and there's so much echoes I only hear a distinct beat indicating an articulate language.

A man is angry. He is nearby, almost over me, but I can't see him. I can't see anything.

My body won't respond to any orders I give and that's pissing me off. Orders are meant to be followed, be it in the COG Army or my own body. Neither are democracies.

A familiar female voice answers right back, sounding just as pissed. The two bicker for a while. A long time. I drift asleep, wake up and they're still bickering.

A cold darkness soon envelops me, bringing a feeling of peace and…

The argument begins anew with renewed vigor, jerking me away from the peace and back into the pain filled reality.

Shut up, guys, I'm trying to die here! Jeez!

Hands drag me up and on my feet, the new position, or maybe the surge of pain that result from it, clears up my vision.

I'm leaning on Laki, stumbling toward… The stranded camp. Well, that's just great, here I expected something more… What the fuck did I expect? A fleet of spaceships?

"Hey…" I groan, half-wondering how that skinny woman can carry my fat ass, half wanting to kiss her for it, "Sorry I fucked up back there…"

I don't see her face, only her legs, looking tiny next to mine. "You did well," she counters in a soft tone, "You killed that monster."

I did? All I can remember is the thing swinging its explosive flail at me and… hitting the ceiling.

My guess is that I passed out right after that and the Boomer was splattered on the wall. Maybe I'm not jinxed after all.

"Your friends are coming to meet us." She sounds nervous. I guess seven steroids junky with heavy armors and chainsaw bayonets are somewhat intimidating.

My eyes leave the rubbles littered street and lock on the Lieutenant. Demetrius and Kleiner are aiming their Lancers at us while the rest seem pretty relaxed.

Demetrius and Kleiner are going to live a long life.

"Hey there, welcome to…" The LT is about to start his welcoming speech, smiling warmly, as always, but I cut it short:

"Fuck, it's good to see your ugly face again, sir!"

"Carmine? What…" He hesitates, not certain which question to ask first. Of course, he's the LT and I know exactly which one he'll pick, "You injured, son?"

His graying eyebrows formed a worried line. LT is always worried; he lost more man than he could handle and now gets his panties in a bunch for any delay in reports or casualties report.

"Yeah," I laugh, "Just a few scratches and severe lacerations on my back."

His eyes turn to Laki, "She that rough?"

I take a second to get the joke. Not his best. "Worst than a Berserker, sir."

Laki, who kept quiet until now, decides it's the right moment to remind everyone she's half my weight and my weight isn't anywhere near light.

"Bear, Mac, get Carmine inside!" The Sarge orders, from the Lieutenant's right.

The team heavy weapon specialist and demolition expert take over the task of dragging my ass while the LT and the others have a short discussion with Laki, concluding with "I don't trust you, but you saved one of my boy and that's worth something, come on, drinks are on me."

Next thing I know, my legs are giving under my weight and the darkness finally comes.

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Laki quickly found out that under the muscles and armor, the Seran people was really just like the Quarians; a broken people living with the knowledge that one day, their world would end. Yet the similarity stopped here, whereas the Quarian had fled their homeworld, the Seran could not, for technological reasons, yes, but also because war was all they knew, their fight or flight reaction as a species was limited to fight or die. This mentality, combined with what seemed to have been millenniums of adaptation, led to a new brand of humans, very different from those that were quickly rising in power out in citadel space.

This was Laki's reason for being on Sera, to study the race now named _Homo Sapiens Sera_ along with the Locusts, a species evolutionarily very close to Serans, but developed for living underground.

As she watched the squad drink and sing with their newly recovered friend, her scientist brain kept on taking notes.

Carmine had recovered enough to be released from the infirmary, just in time to drink himself back into oblivion with his friends.

The Seran's manners were rough but warm, they made sure any civilian that bothered Laki was told to fuck off and that Carmine was not further injured by any ensuing fight.

And they loved to fight. At least twice did a large, black skinned man named Bear leave the table to meet some punk who thought he could take on the old mountain of a man.

Carmine himself had to be ordered by his two superiors to stay the fuck on his chair, otherwise he would have gotten in half a doze fights with locals who whined that Laki was some kind of Lambent sent to infiltrate them.

The Quarian felt like some honored guess in a tribe of feral Krogans, an analogy not too far off, if her estimates were exact.

Sera had a gravity slightly higher than Earth's and its atmosphere was richer; to a regular human, moving here would feel like trying to walk against a strong wind and with a child sitting on their shoulder, which would account for the physical attributes of the planet's inhabitants, to some extent.

The use of protein supplements and myostatin inhibitors as a part of any soldier's basic training also helped.

These combined factors managed to make humanity physically on par with the most common brand of locusts; the Drones…

The Lieutenant, an old, bald man with a severe face and kind eyes, sat in front of the Quarian, next to Corporal Carmine.

Both soldiers were very different; Carmine had a fresh tattoo of a two bullet riddled tombstones on his right bicep, above the words 'Brothers to the End' and his eyes sparkled with intelligence, yet jumped from one point to another.

Clearly, the young soldier had the attention span of a squirrel, while the Lieutenant seemed to have slower wits, but infinitely more wisdom, analyzing every detail with care before taking action.

"So, I take it you're not human." The LT finally guessed, seeming quite okay with the idea.

"Indeed," Laki saw no reason to lie, "I am from a race called the Quarians, we found your planet a week ago and I was sent to investigate it."

Carmine was far too drunk to make sense of the discussion, so he didn't even try and resolved to get himself so drunk he would no longer care.

"I believe you, I don't see why you'd lie, but it's not my call what we do next, so as soon as that human wreck sitting next to me is able to travel, we're moving out."

Bear was standing behind Laki, looking menacing while listening in on the conversation. He felt it was his duty to point out Tyrus had no government nor organized army anymore.

"We'll find Colonel Hoffman." The old man countered, "Word is he's starting a new settlement way out south."

Preliminary reports confirmed the Serans were in disarray, unlike the Locust, who, despite being fractured, still had a solid leadership, but the Quarian scientist could now see that even in chaos, an order could be found.

This would make Yanto insufferable for months, as Laki's colleague had always told to whoever would listen about the theory of chaos and how, although short scale prediction was impossible, the big picture was always obvious by looking at the smaller picture, like a grain of sand on a mountain. Both had similar structures, only on different scales.

This was the same for the humans of this planet; same as a small group of people would organize themselves around a leader in case of problems, a small group of settlements organized itself around a single, powerful one to defer important question to more qualified persons.

Even in chaos, order is found.


	4. Chapter 4

Last time I woke up feeling like that was during the lightmass offensive, and I woke up next to a dead Reaver. This time, it's alcohol's fault and I wake up next to a passed out Bear. The gunner, not the animal, although the difference isn't all that obvious at first sight.

Did I… Did we… Nah, Bear's wearing this dark long sleeved shirt he bought last week with his combat pants and I got a black tank top with green shorts. Point is, I didn't get it on with the Bear.

Where are we anyway?

Sitting up causes pain to flare all across my body, from my toe to the tip of my fucking hairs. All. Over.

My eyes hurt too, but that's because of the intense light shining in my face trough the window.

One hand shielding me from the sun, I look around what I can now guess is the bar, Reilly's Saloon. Half the team is passed out in the place. The other half was on duty, so they didn't drink. I hope, anyway.

Stepping off the table I was sleeping on, I step on Kleiner's face and fall flat on my stomach.

The pain is increased a thousand fold. I never thought it was possible to hurt so much. On the plus side, I spot a new tattoo, on my arm; two tombstones with my dead brothers' names, birthday and date of death, both riddled with bullets and with the words 'Brothers to the End' written in delicate calligraphy. I guess that's morphine's fault. I don't mind, I like the idea.

Morphine. Wouldn't mind some of that. Of course, I remember the doc saying our med supply is limited, so I'm not going to bother them with my cuts; as bad as they are, I got enough misplaced self-esteem not to fuck over people who really need them for, say, having their guts plucked back inside them.

Instead, a bottle of brandy will do just as well.

I leave the bar, bottle in hand, and squint in the morning's sunlight. Should I go to my shack and pass out for the rest of the day, try to find what Laki's up to or go talk to whoever's on guard?

Actually, I need some firepower, since I lost my gear at some point during my… How should I call it? Unexpected day off?

Whatever, point is, I should go see Jack.

So I go left and head for the hole in the ground where we keep our guns and JACK support robot. Two sheets of waterproof fabric sewn together and held by a handful of stick serve as a roof while a couple of sandbags and sheet metal plates make up the walls. No clue how comes our ammo reserve hasn't flooded or anything, but I leave that to the civvies' engineers. I'm a soldier.

Well I try to be. My career in the COG isn't as shiny as Clayton's, even though it started out better; two charges for being absent without permission –I… How to put this? Ran away with my tail tucked between my legs twice- , demoted once from the rank of second lieutenant all the way down to Corporal and transferred from Special Operation to regular forces, mostly because my whole platoon was wiped out, up until last year, when they re-assigned me to squad Omega as their designated Marksman. Not sniper, mind you, they already had snipers and I'm not trained for Sniping, nah, my job is to go around with a scoped Lancer and keep the grubs from flanking us.

Demetrius and Kleiner are our snipers; they go around with Longshots and ghillie suit, sticking to the shadows and taking a shot every five minutes, but that's the one shot that will count. Locust healers, commanders or heavy gunners, they focus on special targets, while my job is only to shoot straighter than a regular rifleman. Commando training isn't all that glamorous when it comes with a guy that has officially ran from a fight twice.

That's why, once in the armory, I pick a standard issue Lancer and replace the holo sight with an ACOG scope before grabbing a Gorgon SMG, a handful of clips and some grenades, two locust-made, one COG version, to be precise.

The robot beeps a greeting when I slap it awake.

"Hey, Jack," I answer while stuffing my new weaponry in a duffel bag, "Could you show me all you got on Onyx armors?"

It beeps negatively, restricted access. Oh well.

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Laki'Zevra Vas Iktomi's awakening was slightly different; she was in a room an old Seran had lent her, James or Jaime, a veteran of the Pendulum wars, as she had learnt during their discussion.

The room was painted a dark blue, the walls and ceiling filled with depiction of the star system and primitive space ships replicas hanging on fishing wires. It was his daughter's room, dead during massive, self inflicted orbital bombardment of the planet.

This thought still made the Quarian sick. Practically exterminating your own race in a desperate attempt to stop its destruction and, from the looks of it, a successful one. What kind of damned soul would take on such a burden and live on? Quarians were a strong and determined people, but such an act was far beyond anything the scientist could imagine her kin doing.

Then again, the Quarians lost.

All these data the old veteran had given her on Seran history, their incredibly old culture, going back six thousand years, plagued with five millenniums of war and the approximate description of how their technology worked had been recorded, along with their physical analysis, the datas being sent to her ship and ready to be relayed to the migrant fleet. This was all fascinating, but the Seran were little more that refugees now, a small group of broken survivors scattered across a dying planet, they were barely more than a scientific oddity, one that would especially interest the Alliance, but still, one with very little impact on the politics of the citadel space.

She delivered the data package and began her morning workouts. She was not strong for a Quarian, not weak, but strength really was not her main concern, she preferred to focus on sharpening her reflexes; most species could be killed by less than a pound of pressure with a sharp object in the right place, knowing that place and being swift enough to strike it before being dispatched had worked like a charm during her field studies, until she found the Locusts, anyway…

The captain of the Iktomi sent her a message soon after she was starting the meditation part of her workout, and she read the orders in a perfectly zen state.

Then her zenitude crumbled and she did a double check.

…**Spectre en route from citadel, you are to aid in negotiation, but do not get involved as anything else than guide, this is not our business anymore…**


	5. Chapter 5

The whole squad is heading out to meet that Spectre. I get to stay behind with Laki, not combat ready yet. Fuck them.

I still suit up and go sit my ass on the barricade, in case the grubs take that opportunity to do something stupid.

Yeah, stupid, I'm the only trained soldier in this camp, but I'm a crack shot, I got tons of bullets and I'm pissed off.

Don't get me wrong, I don't feel like going out there unless I have to, I'm still a coward and a lazy asshole, but I'm a Gear, I had esprit de corps hammered in my skull with a telescopic baton and rivers of sweat. Nothing hurts a COG worst than being useless, might as well be in a fucking coma.

So I scan the perimeter and wait for some dumb shit to make my day.

Two hours in, I'm still waiting for some dumb shit to make my day, so, maybe I won't be that lucky.

The wasteland is aptly named; waste of space. There could be fields of green, trees , a lake, anything, but there's only rubbles. We're set up in an old plaza, two hundred meters wide and surrounded by crumbling skyscrapers, the ground covered in shattered marble. Must have been pretty once, it's just a big toilet now.

There's a street, dead ahead from which grubs like to swarm us, because it's wide and offer some cover in the form of junked cars. Another path, to the left, is our favourite way out, because it's not a street, but actually a bombed out building that leans on its neighbor and allows us to move out in cover.

Then, there's a thousand cracks, alleys and manholes, spread all over the place, that also need to be watched.

The footsteps behind me are light and energetic. Certainly not someone who's spent more than a month on this planet. We tend to either drag our feet or pound the ground at every step, unless we're sneaking, then, you don't hear us at all.

Laki sits next to me, legs dangling over the side of the barricade.

"The others don't like you." Well, she sure is straightforward.

And right. My squad would rather have me on permanent kitchen patrol, but I'm a good warrior and they need good warriors, even unreliable ones.

"I broke under fire once, my whole team was slaughtered." If she thinks anything of it, she hides it well. Not too hard whit full face visor.

Might be odd to just blurt it out like that, but I'm not ashamed of what I did, no matter what they say, the Sarge was being stupid and he got everyone killed as a result. I was smart enough to realize in time and got the fuck out. Received thirty lashes for it and called it fair.

Second time I ran was in the regular forces, but I didn't mean to, I was just getting pushed back steadily while my pals died trying to seek cover from Locust flanking forces. My only fault in that case had been not to die before they had pushed me back to the main force. I still slowed them down far for than an heroic last stand would have, so I got demoted and sent back to spec ops.

That's army for you.

I tell her that when she asks me about it.

"Are you the best soldier in your outfit?" There's no sarcasm, she's just curious. I guess my bluntness gave her the feeling I'd be neutral on such a question. I try to be.

"I'm the only one with commando training, and I've had more combat time than most, but they're all excellent at their jobs."

She then asks me how much schooling an average Gear has, but I figure she wouldn't understand diplomas. "We are taught advanced mathematics, chemistry, physic, philosophy and engineering, a Gear that listened to the teach should be able to calculate a mortar trajectory, drive a car, build a house, cook a meal, fix a car, write poetry, evaluate his chance of survival, use any COG weapon efficiently, swear like a man, drink like ten men, fight like a hundred and die with dignity."

She's quiet for a second, so I add, "Most of us, though, they just remember how to shoot stuff."

I don't know why, but she stick around after that, talking about the migrant fleet and how they were pushed off their homeworld by their own creation. Life in those ship seems shitty at best; stuck in suits, no privacy, no private property, everything you do, you do for the good of someone else.

It's a lot like the army, except you're born in it.

I don't know how we come to talk about mass effect fields, but she's delighted at the fact I actually understand a certain portion of what she says.

The fields reduce matter's mass without altering its size, allowing it so be fired at extreme speeds. I point out that light but fast hits as hard as heavy but slow and she proceeds to blabble about technical shit that amount to say their fields make heavy stuff go fast.

We need those thing.

Not to mention kinetic shields. The way she talks about them, it seems like they'd make our armors look obsolete.

"Oh no!" She seems horrified, "Your suits are incredibly resilient, even by our standards!"

"How comes? If you're that advanced…"

"Minerals, for one thing, your planet's atmosphere and gravity produces unique minerals and your physical strength allows you to carry thicker plates, but the real genius is in the customizability…"

She loses me again. Something about smart interface being unique and incomparably advanced. Of course it is, Adam Fenix designed it.

The Lancer also gets an honorable mention for being what they see as a Heavy Machine Gun and massive enough to match a weak Mass Effect based assault rifle.

Once again. Fenix.

Lightmass technology just gives her a cerebral orgasm every time she reads about it, for some reason.

Fenix.

It's scary to think that the only aspect of our hardware she thinks worth noticing all have Adam Fenix's name all over them… Except flash cloning facilities, and those were a desperate last chance push by our people's best and brightest. The best our elite could do is barely mentioned amongst the casual stuff Fenix did. If I ever meet the man, I'll ask him to sign my plate.

When the Spectre stumbles out of the path, I almost shoot him in the face. Stupid bastard is wearing gleaming silver and a teal undersuit, might as well be projecting a 'Snipe my ass' holo over his… Her head.

"The fuck is this?" I hiss at Laki, handing her the lancer for a second. She peeks in and shrug.

"It's just an Asari."

'Just' an Asari? It's a fucking squid headed, chick faced, knight armoured space cop! Oh why do I bother?

"Carmine, hold your fire!" Boss sounds cranky, like he's being shot at, and I see the blue spot hit the deck. What are they talking about?

Laki squeals when I rip the Lancer from her hands. It didn't fire a single shot, I'd have noticed if it had.

"Friendly fire, dumbass!" Bear roars, angrily.

I tap my mic and yell right back. "Sniper! Open fire, fuckwits, you're under attack!"

And they do. Bear actually peppers the barricade for a second before getting slapped on the back by Mac. Yeah, that was ambiguous, I guess.

A *Wheeet!* and Laki is down off the barricade, clutching her chest. No time to check on her. Something flashed, two windows up, on the right.

…Not a locust. One, two, three… Three eyes on the right, one on the left. Rifle unlike anything I've ever seen. Head… Spread all over the ceiling. "Scratch one." The coldness of my own voice helps my aim, steadies the beating of my heart.

Another round Wheets past me, a glancing hit… No, a near miss to the shoulder, yet enough to push me back a step and rip a piece of barricade behind my boots.

The T shaped crosshair finds a new target and the Onyx suits tells me I should shoot a little bit more to the right, in the form of a tiny red dot. I do what it says and score another headshot, this one twice the distance of my last one… That makes it four hundred meters. That building is the tallest in town, the only one they can get a shot at us from without setting up in the surrounding ruins.

And I'm down too, right next to the Quarian. She's breathing, apparently. Having just suffered the same fall she did, I know why she's having trouble. Damn, feels like Bear is sitting on my chest.

Then, my brain wakes up and the pain from my cuts hits me full force, flooding my mind like a… Guh, I'm not a poet, it hurts like landing on your heavily lacerated back is bound to hurt!

Right now, it appears to me this is the worst pain I've ever felt, but I had a tooth removed once, no anesthesia, it was slightly worse.

Laki's up before I can even move and she fumbles with my belt for a few second. The pervert part of my mind thinks I' just landed in a bad, sci fi porno, the logical one knows she's going for the Gorgon SMG.

A burst of the thing on something I can't see seems to settle it for now and she uses that glowing orange computer of hers on my chest.

Apparently, the bullet kicked through the plate, but whatever she does, it makes me feel good, takes the pain away and gives me that same kind of slap in the face, a bucket of water and a healthy dose of coffee would.

Two seconds and my boots are grinding dirt, my gloves gripping cold steel and my optics sweeping for a target.

The Stranded are out now, peppering the area with Locust firepower and taking cover in any hole they can find.

Two of them are set up on the sides of the gate, waiting for someone to knock on it or something. Might be waiting for the squad to reach it, but they won't, not without some covering fire, because this thing just went to shit and there's a full blown battle going on right now.

I kick the gate open and take two steps forward, hosing anything that shines with automatic fire. The two guys do the same on my flanks.

"Area suppressed!" I shouldn't be telling them to move, but hey, I'm the base acting commander until someone higher ranked gets in, "Go! Go!"

And they all explode from the rubbles, spraying and praying as they run.


	6. Chapter 6

The guy to my right gets hit and my helmet tracks the shot back to a small shed, seventy meters out, three o'clock. Used to be a bus stop, I believe. The thing hiding in it pokes its head out and I blow it clean off with two bursts. The first shimmered off, bouncing on some kind of force field, but the second kicked in and kicked in good.

"Tango down." I don't know why I keep calling kills like that, it's just my training talking I suppose.

Mac reaches us first and the alien second, but the others are tired, heavy and pissing high caliber ammo like gardeners off their meds, so they're still way out in the fucking sticks.

"Would you kindly fucking move!" Might not be the exact tactical formulation I should have used, but they quit pissing around and rush it back to the gates like trashball linebackers.

The second stranded and I each grab a gate under Mac's covering fire and pull them back until the sun, rising dead ahead, is nothing but a slim yellow line through scrap metal.

We then seal the bitch with rebar and chains before seeking cover of our own.

The LT is crouched behind a fancy palisade, ten steps from the bar's left corner, the kind of ancient-looking rock and concrete shit Tyrans were so found of, but is such shitty cover they'd have been better off with white picket fence.

We dive there just as pings and whistles announce we're getting shot at directly.

Being in a firefight is all fun and shit until someone gets a bead on you, then it's just shit. Picking ricochets, mostly friendly ones, and rock splinters from his arm, the boss is grumbling like a grizzly bear with a hangover.

I punch his black and yellow shoulder plate. "They're hitting us from the fucking skyscraper!"

He punches me back for some reason. "I know, dipshit, you've just volunteered to take a squad there and blast it down!" Yay me.

Laki instantly volunteers, same as the stranded kid that helped me close the gate. The rest draw straws and I get a bunch of jinxed, sloppily trained civvies to accompany me on a high-risk op.

Yay for democracy.

We exit the base from the rear gate, weapons cold and heads down so as to not attract any attention. The street leading to our objective is littered with victims of the hammer strike, ash statues frozen in horror that makes target acquisition software on my helmet throw a seizure and die. Guess we're doing this the old fashioned way… Just as well, that computer assistance was distracting as hell…

"Watch those crates." I order, releasing the Lancer's foregrip to point a pile of metal boxes fallen off a delivery truck thirty meters ahead. They cover the whole left hand side, ten meters behind a bombed out intersection, and the truck embedded itself in a storefront, blocking the right side. "Who's got the big gun?"

We travel in a delta formation and the Boomshot operator is at the left edge. She waves and I nod towards the crates, "Blast that mess."

So she does and, sure enough, Lambants get blasted to shiny little pieces and ash statues crumble in the wind all over the intersection.

I put an eye on my scope and scan the fogged road before doing a swirl with my left hand, to encompass everyone, and, hand held flat, order them forward while I cover them from the top of a minivan.

Coward? Fuck you, I'm a sharpshooter and my job is to keep this mess together, if I get shot at directly, I can't be bothered to look after everyone else. No, I'll stay here, on my stomach and pick off targets as they come.

A longshot would help, but they're a rare commodity, so the others advance in cover and I just hope whatever attacks them first isn't too armored.

Laki and the rest just progress by stages going through hammer strike victims in black puffs, alternating between cover and charge. The slim Quarian is blending her sophisticated tactics with our barbaric charge quite well, if you ask me, and the Stranded are using cover like Gears would, so perhaps I'll actually live to see tomorrow.

They pass the blasted intersection, move right through the crates and disappear from my sight behind the crashed delivery truck.

Here I am, alone and cut off from my team in hostile territory… Make no mistake, I can work under pressure and won't crumble in a whimpering mass at the first hiccup, but I'm still, for all means and purposes, a massive pussy who barely manages not to shit his pants in combat. You'd think time would make me harder, but it doesn't and my hands are shaking now, accompanied by shivers along my spine.

Down I go, boots crushing gravel as I sprint across the intersection.

This is way too easy, we should be knee deep in guts right now…

I ram into the truck's rear, peek around and leap back out.

The others are almost fifty meters ahead and holding position around concrete slabs marking the target's parking. The target itself is a fuck-huge skeleton that used to be a skyscraper, back when it had walls, now, I can see the devastated city beyond and shadows dancing around the top floors.

Blue, yellow, purple, the whole fucking rainbow is being fired from that tower, all headed straight at our camp. Hard to believe we made it out under that kind of fire… It's odd they did not spot us coming in, one of them must have looked down at some point!

Still, I reach my pack of misfits without taking any kind of fire and get to wonder just what I'm supposed to do next.

It's like my brain works on adrenaline, I can't think without being shot at.

"Laki, you know anything about what we're up to?" I don't see any reasons for her to… I mean, that just came out on its own, I can see plenty of reason she'd know about them.

"Nothing solid," She confesses, "I think they're Reapers…"

And that's all she gets to say before being silenced by the sound of bending metal. The delivery truck comes rolling down the street like a rolling boulder and skids to a stop ten meters away from our position.

Boomshot girl gets ready to hit whatever tried to throw the truck at us, but gets a smoking hole in the back of her skull, courtesy of our friends in the building. "Heavy weapons team, watch the street, all rifles on the building, suppressive fire!"

That's all we're outfitted for, suppression, even with my scope I can't do precision shooting, so I spray and pray like everyone else, only I do so in a more controlled manner because I actually aim and my back hurts like a bitch with every burst.

The thing in the street roars and just leaps at us, crushing two Stranded upon landing and batting a third away. It's like an Hollow beast, except with glowing blue optics instead of yellow, and it's looking straight at me.

"Change in plan," I announce, "Get in the building, run!" I'm not retreating, not really, the structure is our objective after all, so we're running away forward, yay us.


	7. Chapter 7

Energy bolts rip right through what's left of the ceiling, the upper floor neighbors apparently not that big on hospitality, and we return fire blindly, shooting over our heads with everything we've got, which isn't much: Two lancers, an Hammerburst and a Gnasher…

I turn to Laki, take a good look at her shotgun, and ask, "Where the fuck did you find that?"

I'm certain our last shotty broke a week ago… And fairly certain she didn't have it back at the barricade…

"Fixed..." A shot bounces off her shield and she pumps three slugs overhead, disappearing in a mist of plaster and dust.

We're not in the lobby, this place is way too small, we got in from a window straight into someone's office, though everything was looted long ago, leaving only yellowing walls (of course, only one floor with walls still standing and we end up in it, thanks, Murphy!) and a rotten black door.

The big guy out there, in the parking lot, decides to throw a whole car at us, though I don't get to see the result, on account of getting the fuck out of there faster than a rocket-powered cheetah.

The corridor stretches to both sides and there's a door ahead, missing its top half. I hesitate just a second and get pushed through the door by my panicked squad mates.

The impact is breath-taking, maybe because of my wounds and the three grown adults sitting on me, but it still feel like that car rattled the whole building. My vision is blurred and shaky, thanks to the flow of tears the sudden surge of pain brought up. It tastes like copper, feels like I have a copper rod drilling through the back of my skull, and the metaphorical rave party our neighbors are throwing for us just adds to the confusion.

What now? Retreat? Secure the area? Fall back? Report? What do I say? I'm on the floor, trying to crawl under a conference table, with no clue where everyone else is, except for the few brief bursts of automatic retaliation fire, somewhere to the left and back.

The copper rod is vibrating now, whistling like a kettle, drowning out conscious thoughts. It always happens like this, that's why nobody wants my sorry ass in a fight anymore, I'm lost, I'm panicked and fear is clogging my movements. Even under the table, in relative safety, the only insight my mind provides is that it wants to be somewhere else, somewhere safe…

It wants this clusterfuck to end, but won't do anything about it… No, let smarter, stronger people take care of it, let someone else take the risks, I just want to see another day, see mom and dad, Ben, Tony and Clay, then we can joke about how big of a pussy I was back in the army…

But it won't happen, because Ben and Tony are dead, because everyone else just wants someone else to take risks and, that one time, that someone happened to be my brothers…

When is this shit going to end? UIR, Locusts, Lambents, Reapers… Come all, lill' and tall, there's a few Serans left standing! Come try your luck, you may just be the ones to do the job right! Failing that, you can always burn down the Carmine family tree! Don't be shy, they hardly bite back, just look at that one cowering under the table!

Well fuck them! I'm not going to die, not before I say so! They don't like it? Well let them do something about it, I'm sick of this!

The Lancer is hot, covered with dust and its scope cracked, but all lights shine blue and smoke rises from the frame when I thumb the chainsaw to life. I count four friendlies still standing, but we're pinned down in this room, no exit in sight outside the doorway we came in from, and that bastard has disappeared under quite a bit of rubbles.

The Onyx armor tries to find me some targets, but soon goes complete bananas, saying I should open my backup parachute and check altimeter. Useless piece of shit.

You know what isn't a useless piece of shit? A mono-carbide chainsaw bayonet. Sure it screams overcompensation, but mine just bites through the wall like its paper, digging a neat plus sign in the yellowing wallpaper. I kick the middle of the plus, but my boot goes right through and gets stuck, so I trashball-tackle it instead.

Hurts like tackling a razor-wire fence while stark naked, not that I ever tried that, but we have our exit.

Both Stranded rush out and Laki closes the march, her shotgun shakily held with both hands.

We're in the break room now, just a few busted candy machines, an empty shelf where the coffee machine used to gurgle and a six places cafeteria table, rusted beyond repair and holding together by an outrageous disregard for the laws of physics.

More importantly, the ceiling is missing, as are the ones of both floors above ours. They did not crumble down, there is nothing on the room's floor, they're just not there anymore.

"Throw frags up there!" I snap, whipping out my own handheld charge, a locust one. The Stranded mimic my fanning motion with their grenades and let them go in opposite directions, blanketing the room above with anti-personnel explosives.

Three pops later, Laki's climbing on the shelf to fire a few shells into the dust cloud. I follow a second later, but climb straight up and into the smoke.

There's plenty of movement up here, bits of wall, blown apart years ago, now dangling on bits of wallpaper, no to mention tiny whirlwinds, formed by the air rushing right through this floor.

It comes at me from the left, bird-like and mechanic, the talons on its fingers whistling inches from my throat. It's fast, I bring my bayonet to bear, but end up using the whole Lancer as a shield from a powerful kick that bends the gun like it's just a toy.

I'm scared, I'm always scared, and part of me wants to run away, but if I do that, I become the prey until it kills me or something kills it… You know what they say about running away from your problems? Well I bet it never involved a commando knife.

The other does not hesitate when I pull the blade from my back, it just lunges again. Just as well, I work better if I don't think about it…

_Sidestep, grab the wrist, step under center of mass, it's too fast, already too close for a shoulder throw… Step under the elbow, twist the arm, go with the flow… It's too strong, arm won't twist all the way back…_

The thing struggles, almost breaking away, but I'm in the zone and perfectly positioned.

_Sideway kick in the left shin, pulling on the right arm, it falls to one knee, faces me, pulls on my arm to pull back up, left hand ready to strike… Too far for knife, let it get back up, let it get close… It pulls too hard, forces me to present my left side, knife is in my right hand… It's on its feet now… No, floating slightly above the floor, too much momentum… _

It must be comical; me leaning back, mouth pursed, my dance partner snarling, ready to claw my throat out.

_Little spikes near the hips provide good grip, must let go of the knife to block its talons, then grab the spike with right hand, left still holding its wrist… One boot slides forward, under its center of mass, use its momentum to pull it up, upside down and on the floor with me… It's on its back, on top of me… Roll it over, pull myself on its back, grab the knife where it stuck in the floor and stick it in the base of its skull._

I pull my Snub pistol next and scan the room, which turns out to be the whole fucking floor, from one corner to another. Two silhouettes are getting up, clawed and armored like my dance partner. I waste three rounds on each, then scan the opposite direction, squeeze out another round in a cluster of blue lights and, as it goes down, call the all clear.

Laki pokes her head above the hole to look around, confused, and sees me just as I pull my blade from the bird's skull, the serrated end causing a cringe-worthy saw noise as it pops out.

I start talking as soon as they're all up, "No need to go further…" I bend over to check my Lancer, but it's smashed… What was I saying? Oh, "This place is just what we need, set charges on the support beams and let's get out of here!"

Knife in an icepick grip, I use that wrist to steady the other one, which is holding the pistol, this technique has a name, originally meant for holding flashlights with pistols, but I really don't care enough to remember it right now.

The others congratulate me briefly as they go on with their job, they like my moves, they want to buy me a beer, the usual shit. That stunt I pulled earlier might look impressive, shanking one fucker only to shoot three more, but truth is, this was a close call, that thing almost had me at least twice and had its friends been just a bit faster, you can bet they'd have shot me full of holes. I was lucky, and I tell them as much, though it only makes me look like an action movie cliché.

The Stranded have all the charges, so Laki and I stand watch… Actually, they're not really charges, we use thermite and a few grenades worth of explosive compound. The thermite weakens the supports and the charge gives it the final nudge…

"No stairs," The Quarian points out, nodding to the center of the floor, where elevators and stairs used to be, now they're just a gaping hole, "any idea how we're getting down?"

Didn't think of that, doesn't seem important right now though, "Same way we came." Or not, but it should be satisfactory enough for her.

Satisfactory or not, she walks away to check the parking, where I lost half my squad, and I follow a second later.

The corpses are gone, same as the big guy, but the smashed truck and car are still there… Off in the distance, as far as the eye can see, crumbling buildings and burnt houses dot the landscape. Rainbows are still being fired at our camp from the top floor, but it lost some intensity…

"Shit!" What? "Mis… Fire in… Gonna blow!"

Oh…

Both stranded are speeding away from the satchel charge, the fuse prematurely ignited by thermite sparks. Whoever carried it just ditched his whole kit and I can see the fuse, a thin black rope sparkling orange stars merely ten meters to the left. Way too close… Three seconds, four maybe, the damn fuse ignited very close to its end.

Laki and I look at each others, then down at the parking, three meters down, and she jumps first, a split-second faster than I am. We hit the ground running, vaulting over derelict cars to finally reach an old pickup truck, which we both decide will provide sufficient protection, once we're there, we curl up, heads low, and await the blast.

When you expect something to go boom, five seconds are a long fucking while and I actually peek over the cabin to take a look. Both Stranded are standing on the edge, frozen in terror. As a commando, I've learned to jump from any height without hesitation, these guys are civilians, they think five meters is a deadly fall…

"Jump you…" Whatever I was going to call them is lost in the explosion and I just dive back to cover, just in time, apparently, because something shaves the top half of the truck clean off a moment later. We don't get any time to recover from the shock as the building collapses like a card castle, throwing smoke and massive debris everywhere, some twice the size of our truck.

Laki is once again one step ahead and takes off like a frightened deer, hopping over a piece of office furniture as it slides along the floor, dead in her path. I follow and don't turn back when something smashes the truck.

For a second, it feels as though we're being sucked in by the blast, but a glance at the skyline tells me the whole block is actually collapsing, like sand down a drain, and we're running at full speed only to stay in the same place. Buildings get sucked in right past us and the street undulates like a flag in the wind, only to crumble right behind me, turning to an almost liquid flow of tar and sand.

We're hallway to the camp when the flag finally snaps and we find ourselves looking into an old metro tunnel, the street itself way too high for us to reach now, and it keeps on shooting up, like a big stone and concrete dick. Laki keeps running straight in, but I, who's merely five steps behind, must drop my pistol to latch on a piece of track hanging off the side. I sheet the knife, pull my other hand up just in time to see Laki slam herself on the left wall, I don't see the train as much as I feel it coming to meet my helmet.

One desperate pull and I'm holding the crumbling concrete between the tracks. The sight of all these wagons flying over my helmet to plunge into the abyss behind would have been awesome, if it weren't for the fact the edge is turning to dust under my fingers.

My right hand unlatches just as the train finishes its fall. One more second and I'll be following it…

I need an ice axe…

Knife is too far… Locust grenade!

Just as the thing leaves my belt, a big chunk of concrete detaches from the tunnel and it just happens to be the chunk I'm holding… The grenade beeps and wraps around the left rail.

Five seconds fuse, five seconds to pull myself up…

Fortunately, Laki comes running at that moment and pulls me up easily, despite our size difference. You think now we'll get a break? No fuck you, feral Bloodmounts, three of them, are rushing straight at us to investigate and I'm not taking these fuckers on with a knife… Good thing Laki has a shotgun.

Ever spin cocked a lever action rifle?

Neither have I, but since I have maybe two heartbeats to aim and shoot the first hollow beast, I learn fast. It's easy, just like the old movies, just keep your fingers in the lever and swing the gun backward, entropy will do the rest. I do it three times, kill the first two creatures, miss the fourth time and must cock normally, doesn't matter, it dies like the rest, its momentum pulling its corpse in the abyss.

I keep the gun aimed at the dark tunnel for almost a minute afterwards, but nothing comes for us. "Come on, it that all you've got?" Yeah, I think I lost it, I'm talking to a tunnel, "The Carmine family tree isn't toasted yet!"

Getting no answer, I hand the gun back to Laki and get moving.

**Warning,** my helmet drums, **seismic activity detected.**

Oh fuck you.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: I need to be more dedicated when I write stuff, more orderly, so, from now on, I'll be delivering two updates a week, according to my readers' preference. This week will be Lost Brothers, you guys tell me what you want me to work on next week, so long as I don't have votes for another story, I'll continue this one.**

**I'd also like to apologize for the unreliability of my updates thus far, it's unfair of me to just put a story up, build up people's interest then leave you guys hanging, you're doing me a favour by reading my work and I should be grateful for that, so, from now on, I'll endeavour to show that gratitude and not let you guys down.**

The adrenaline rush wears off somewhere within the dark metro tunnels of whatever city this used to be. The recent events are burned in my mind, crisp and clear, yet fragmented and in no logical order. Did the train fly over my head before or after the building collapsed? What happened to the Stranded accompanying us? Are they all dead? Is that even possible?

Laki is just as confused, but she holds her shotgun like she means business and I must contend with some lead pipe I found on the floor earlier. Can't remember when I lost my gear, I know the Lancer was smashed, but the rest is drowned in an adrenaline-induced haze. Or maybe it's the Onyx suit, pumping me full of chemicals so my wounds won't get even worse.

I squint in the darkness, not that orienting ourselves in a straight tunnel is hard at all, we're just worried there's more… Stuff waiting for us in the dark. Laki's omni-tool shines bright, but even that only gives us five meters of visibility. Anything could be crawling further down and we'd never see it.

Onyx armour, thankfully enough, lacks much of the glowing bits regular Gears have to contend with. It's not that big of an issue most of the time, seeing as everything on the battlefield seems to glow anyhow, but when you're in the dark and would rather things do not degenerate into a battlefield because your only firearm has only two shells left…

Movement up ahead. Rats. Fuck you, rats, I'm monologuing here!

And now I forgot what I was thinking about. My mind's been like scrambled eggs ever since the Locusts gave me the special treatment, it's like I spend more time inside my own head than I do looking around.

There was a South-islander once who told me the soul can leave the body before death or something like that, it's absolutely not what's happened to me, mine seems to have retreated so deep within my body it's poking out of my asshole.

The rats that scurried off into the dark, two of the three I spotted, come back our way, running like the devil himself is after them.

Laki jumps when I grab her right shoulder. A second later, she flicks off her omni-tool and we are plunged in darkness, hugging the wall and keeping as quiet as humanly possible… Or Quarianly possible in her case.

We're both wearing full-face helmets and that never helps with echolocation, but her suit is some advanced shit and, as I find out a second later, so is mine.

First, it understands I can't see shit thanks to my retinas spreading wider than the fucking moon and turns on a dirty grey vision mode that lets me see for-fucking-ever in that grainy tunnel, so long as your definition of forever is no further than ten feet.

Then, it cranks up the audio like its favourite song just came out and shows me a heart-beat line in the lower right corner of my eyes, a line that throws a stroke with every step I take.

Oscilloscope, I think it's called.

The grey vision thing isn't thermal, it's not that awesome, unfortunately. Instead, it appears I've got IR sensors somewhere in my face and at least two lamps located under the mask's optics. It's like using a head-mounted light, only without color nor depth perception.

Good thing with this kind of night-vision tech is that eyes shine like flares on your screen, and boy do I see flares right now.

I count twelve pairs of silver orbs hovering just outside my lamp's threshold, looking straight at us but not moving an inch. There's only one way to go and those things know it, they're not in any hurry.

The ceiling is flat, not a manhole to be found nearby, because it's a bloody subway, not a sewer, you moron. Looking at the walls bears better results; six meters back is a rectangular black shape, either a service tunnel or a glitch in the night vision. Only one way to find out.

Laki follows without a sound and seems to know where we're going, though I'm not picking up any sort of IR signatures emanating from her face. Odds are she has the same kind of gizmos I do, only so far ahead of the curve it's gone all the way around and hit me in the ass.

Of course, my suit was not glitching and we're soon looking at a rusty ladder in an empty circular room. I don't know what Laki's thinking, but it seems too easy if you ask me…

Hang on; we just had a building fall on us, almost fell into a bottomless pit, I nearly had my head taken off by a powered-off train and there's spooky monsters waiting for us in the dark. If that's _too easy_, then I might as well quit right now.

Now, just because I decided it's not too easy at all, you can bet some space monster is going to be waiting up that ladder to bite my nipples off…

Laki goes first, she has the shotgun, and I get to see just how skin-tight that suit of hers actually is…

Well, I can't tell what she looks like behind that mask, but I do know she has very… Firm… Upper thighs?

Look, I haven't seen a decent-looking woman since Jacinto, I'd bang a coffee table if it had a hole in it, you can't blame me for drooling over a somewhat feminine alien in ornate armour…

She pushes at the grate, curses at someone called Bosh and moves aside on the ladder. "It's stuck, you give it a try…"

We're so close I could smell her perfume if we weren't both enclosed in our own micro-climates. What is it they say? So close yet so far?

Holding on to the ladder with one hand, I put my back against the obstacle and push with both legs. If you've ever had a tooth pulled out, you know the tickling of pain that pierces through local sedatives, well, that feeling criss-crosses my legs and back following the holes in my flesh.

Pain is irrelevant, even more so when you're pumped full of painkillers, but it does creep me out, as I haven't refilled the suit's supply of chemical, and I'm certain it should have run out by now.

Why is that creepy? Where can the suit refill its chem supplies? What is the only source of biological material it has available?

The poor sucker locked inside.

Something gives. Not the hatch, not my sanity, the ladder, right under my boots, rusted piece of shit!

I see Laki grow smaller but fail to understand why until my back hits the ground, five meters down. Real smooth shit there, you can see commando training truly pays for itself, I'm swift as a cat…

A fat cat, high on valium.

I still see in the dark, though, but that has nothing to do with being a cat… Or commando training, it has to do with the Onyx armour I'm wearing.

Two-Six RTI had shit gear, I see that now, that's the only thing that set us apart from those Onyx Guard cunts…

Not quite the right time to revisit my career choice, however. The eyes are here, all around me, sensing weakness.

Bloodmounts, six of them. Laki screams something about running, but they've got me surrounded, two steps from the ladder. If I'm fast enough, I might be able to climb out of their reach. If I'm not, I'll get stabbed in the back and it's game over.

Fight or flight? That's not how my mind puts it, instead, it plays back a famous statement by Marcus Fenix, the hero of Aspho fields.

"_Sometimes, death is all you can see, it's all around you, it consumes you, so have to look it in the eyes and bare your teeth."_

Death bares its teeth at me first, the biggest motherfucker of the pack just growls, saliva pooling between its scythe-like arms as it braces to leap.

Fuck this, Gears don't fly…

It pounces, so do I. We both roar with all we've got and it twists its head sideways, going for the throat.

Commando training has some very strict guidelines when taking on a wild animal with just your fists, most of which revolve around; _don't you idiot!_

The uppercut I throw at the hollow beast has far more effect than expected, knocking it tongue out and snapping its head back in an almost comical way. It's not knocked out, not by a long shot, but it still retreats, confused and hurt.

A warning message almost slaps me in the face; it doesn't say anything, it's just a fisheye view of a Bloodmount swinging its scythes towards… Me.

I spin on the spot, too late to catch the thing's arms, but soon enough to slap them aside and kick it right in the mouth.

Another alarm, this time it points me to the right. The ladder is to the left and there's a starving nightmare coming in hot from the right. I bolt towards the ladder and jump so that I slam sideways into the thing.

Only I don't; my boot reaches an echelon at chest-height and I kick off straight towards the snarling beast, one hand outstretched to soften the upcoming impact, the other squeezed tightly and held ready to deliver the mother of all haymakers.

The Bloodmount pounces, all pointy bits aimed at me, and we seem to hand in the air that way for a full minute. Then the palm of my outstretched hand brushes against the thing's claws and it all speeds up like time's trying to catch up. I pull hard against the claw and bring my fist down like the wrath of god himself.

I see my foe roll away in the dark through the fisheye window. No time to check if it's still in the game, I've got another dance partner eager for his turn. I sidestep a downward swipe, back away two steps and just as it's coiling back for another strike, its head explode.

I didn't do it. I don't think I did it anyhow.

Another warning. The big fucker snuck up on me. I roll away and turn to see it too lost its head, somewhere between sneaking up on my ass and my ass jumping out of reach, something ripped this thing's cranium clean off.

A third Bloodmount comes at me head on and gets hit by a fireball from above.

Laki.

The beast dies, but I've still got three dance partners lined up and cannibalism doesn't seem as tempting as fresh Carmine ribs.

"Catch!" The thing Laki drops looks like a steel ribbon, shivering in the grainy night-vision, but it's actually a knife. Smaller than mine, but a pointy piece of metal nonetheless. I catch it in time not to be killed stupidly by friendly… Knife dropping, and turn back to the hollow beasts, circling me like sharks.

"Don't suppose you've got any more tricks in store?" I ask her, earning a shaky negative.

You know I'm a pussy, nowhere near a hero, but everything's a matter of perspective. An hour ago, I'd have dismissed a single Gear taking on three Bloodmounts with a shiv as nothing but drunken tales and boast.

But right now, you know what I call that? Fucking good odds.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Gavoon: Hey, it's nice just to know you enjoy the story. Don't worry, stuff will happen as soon as I've picked up the pace.**

**Guest: That might be because it's not even started yet... But, hey, if you think I should do things differently, I'm listening.**

When a man or woman dies, it is their brethren's duty to return them to the earth, bury them in a tomb about six feet deep. Religions were always adamant on that fact, never mind that most of them considered the afterlife to be located up above... The reason for that is nowhere near as spiritual as it seems; it's easy to send your dead in the sky, but it's harder to keep them there. If you let them sit where they died… Well, that just brings much unpleasantness, so does burying them in shallow graves.

Digging individual graves deep enough to keep body parts from resurfacing is tedious, but safer than just setting them on fire, though some cultures soon learned that you could set floating coffins on fire and be done with it.

That's all I think about as Laki drags my lacerated ass for the second time this week.

If I die, they'll burn me. We don't bury our dead anymore, not since E-Day.

_Fucking good odds._ Do you know what happens when one guy alone tries to fight off three starved monstrosities? He gets chewed up, though in my case, Onyx armour and the finest training a grunt as myself can get only got me halfway chewed up.

The left half.

To the armour's defence, it kept me fighting like some caveman on steroids, which I am, truth be told, right up until it ran out of juice for the assisted movement systems. At that moment, I became fifty percent slower and fifty percent weaker.

But I won. Can't recall how exactly, just a lot of getting pounced and bitten while stabbing and biting in return. My left arm is a mess, I can see the bones through two lacerations and at least five finger-wide strips of flesh are missing, exposing the glistening muscles of my forearm.

The helmet did a good job, but if I make it out alive, it'll need a new paintjob and perhaps some fresh filters; I can still smell the beast's breath, the scent of rotten meat and sour blood. Now all I can think about is Hollow beasts. Something is wrong with those things, predators don't smell like rotten meat, they are hygienic, have to be or they'll alarm every prey at the slightest breeze in the wrong direction.

I failed to see it before, but the pattern is clear to me now that I've lost a few gallons of blood; The corruption runs underground.

We don't bury our dead not only because the Locusts come from beneath, but because the deeper you go, the more corrupt things become. Imulsion, the miracle fuel we've been killing each other over for all these years, the cause of everything, from rustlung to every modern war, it's at the bottom. Then come the Lambent, beneath the Locusts, above Imulsion, those things don't abide by the laws of nature, they mutate, charge off and die with no consideration for self-preservation, as individuals or as a species.

Then come the Locusts, underneath the humans, above the Lambents, these things are a grotesque parody of life on the surface, they follow the rules, but loosely. Drones reproduce by rape, hollow beasts are often not suited to underground life, but were never seen on the surface, many Locusts are simply not viable from a biological standpoint.

Then, there's us, the surface, bound by the rules of evolution and natural selection… And then there's whatever's above, in space. The Quarians, the Asaris and who know what else…

I don't know where I was going with that, but when I wake up in a pure white room, naked and starving, these thoughts are the first to surface.

The room I'm in is wide and tall enough to fit a Centaur tank, but too full of expensive medical machinery and empty beds for even a single wheel of a Centaur to fit.

A monitor to my left beeps in rhythm with my heart, an IV discretely drip feed a saline solution into my arm and there's soft music coming through a door I can't see, somewhere to the left, behind the monitor.

Beyond bandages and loose hospital trousers, I'm utterly naked under these sheets. That means no armour, no weapons and nothing to help me not be killed at the first hiccup.

Oh, don't get me wrong, this place is nice, real peaceful, and the monitor throws a shit fit when I pull the suckers from my chest, almost as though someone really cares if my heart keeps beating or not, but I've seen so many safe havens go to hell in the blink of an eye, or the squeeze of a trigger, that this one hardly brings me any sort of comfort.

The nurse that comes to check on me is human, Kashkuri, and utterly disturbed, from the looks of it. She turns and calls someone through the door.

"Sergeant!"

I try to stand and she just stays there, calling insistently as if I were some monster about to free itself from its metaphysical prison.

My back hurts, as does my arm and most predominantly my head, but it all clears away when I see who it is the nurse was calling.

Clayton. Clayton fucking Carmine just walks in my room, wearing a Staff Sergeant's dress uniform and the widest grin you've ever seen.

"Fuck, squirt, how are you not dead yet!?" Is the most sentimental thing I've heard this asshole say since we were five.

I walk up to him and he extends his hand. Fuck this. I take my big brother into the tightest bear hug possible with my injuries and he snorts like big brothers do when the squirt does something ridiculous.

"Clayton," I say once he manages to pry my arms off him, "where have you been? What's going on?"

He's still smiling. "Priorities, kid, let's go get breakfast before they run out of bacon again!"

He hands me tired jeans and a black t-shirt with the logo of Dark Tessa, a singer he loved as a kid. I put them on, Clay and I are roughly the same size, and we venture out into the cold corridors. I'm still bare foot and jeans without underwear isn't the cozyest dress code ever, but right now, I don't care. Clayton's alive, I'm alive, we're relatively safe and we're about to go get breakfast!

Murphy's law says if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

The first thing I can think of when we reach the cafeteria is, "What day is it?"

Clay looks at me funny, like this is the weirdest thing he's ever heard. The cafeteria is empty, the smell of eggs and bacon filling the air and bringing water to my mouth, and I want to know the day? Preposterous!

"Harvest Twenty-first, why?"

A lone tear rolls down my cheek despite myself. Yeah, I should have known.

Harvest Twenty-first is the day our father died, it's a date burned in my mind so crisp and clear it's the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks me which day we are. It's also how I can tell dreams apart from reality.

Clayton understands and smiles, a tender smile far too kind for my brother, the room begins to fade and he puts a hand on my shoulder, "You'll be fine, Carmine!" roars Clay in the Lieutenant's voice, "Just hang in there!"

Then, everything goes dark, leaving only pain and a scent of bacon.

Time means nothing in the darkness, an hour passes and feels like a minute, or perhaps a minute passes and feels like an hour. In that instant, I understand what was before the Big Bang, before time existed.

Nothing. Everything. There was no time, no _before_, it's like a hand grenade going off, there was no explosion before you pulled the pin, no momentum, everything was tightly packed and idle. Time is the grenade's blast, it pushes us all over the place, spreads matter thin and screw you if you're in the way.

The Blood Mounts that tore me up, the Locusts, Laki and everyone else are all the same damned thing, fragments of the same grenade, flying away and bumping into one another…

And then, the morphine wears off and none of it makes any sense anymore. Or maybe it does, I'm too busy bleeding out to just care anymore.

Wherever we are, it's moving; a boat, car or helicopter, I don't know, but it's tight, dark and rocky.

No monitor checking my heartbeat, no clean sheets, I'm bare chest on a metal bench with dirty bandages soaked with pus clinging to my torso and forearm.

At this point, pain is a given, it follows me at every step, every breath, but the spike I feel going up the side of my neck as I sit up tells me something is badly busted in my arm.

Laki is curled up on the bench opposite mine, deep asleep, apparently. The ceiling is low and I need to crouch walk to the only way out, a dull grey electric door in between both benches.

There's a few stairs and another door, then, I'm out under the blue sky, rust, ropes and water surround me.

So, a boat then.

The LT is leaning on a… What are those things called? Balustrade? The thing you hold on to while you're puking your guts overboard.

He sees me, don't ask me how, his back was turned, and waves me over.

I lean against the _railing_ and rub the rust with my thumb before asking, "What's up, sir?"

He scoffs, "We thought you were done for, your friend did something with that Omni-Tool of hers and you weren't so fucked anymore."

Well, he wasn't made Lieutenant for his narrative skills that's for sure.

"Where we going?"

This is a shipping boat, just big enough for Laki and the squad. We are moving upstream, far enough from the coast that I can't figure out where we are, but close enough that I can see trees and buildings in the distance.

The Lieutenant points upstream. "That way. The Spectre wants to meet someone in authority, we're bringing her to Hoffman."

As good a plan as any. It bugs me that the Quarians have space ships and we still have to ride this death trap, but hey, politics.

One thing I like with Stranded is that their definition of a political debate revolves around punching people in the face.

I'd bet my shirt whatever's going to happen once we get to Hoffman will be far less pleasant than being punched in the face.

I would, but I don't have a shirt.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: ShadowCub: He's still alive isn't he? ;)**

**SciFiFan96: Done! **

I stay up on the deck with the LT for a while. I like the man, believe it or not, I met lots of incompetent officers in the COG, people who'd achieved rank through personal wealth and connections, like my first Sergeant, but the Lieutenant isn't one of those, he's a grunt who crawled out of the Pendulum war broken and confused, went back to school and took his fate in hand.

I have college tuition, Social Studies and Philosophy, in case you hadn't noticed yet, and that makes me pretty fucking smart for a Gear, but I still feel like an idiot compared to Lieutenant Jack Alphonse Turner.

He never went to college, never needed the hand holding, he went straight to the Ephyra Officer's Academy, took tests even I would fail lamentably and got himself enough schooling to make General.

Of course, you don't make General in the COG without some serious connections and the kind of money you can't earn from an honest military career, so they made him a Commander in the Navy, nevermind that his specialty so far had been crawling around in the mud.

He seconded a stealth Destroyer, official designation CNV 5N34/ky, or _Sneaky_, to its crew, and that's all he'll ever tell us about his time in the Navy, everything else is classified, including his return to the gritty world of ground pounders.

"Just because it floats doesn't mean it's a boat," He tells me, looking around with barely contained disgust, "I've known sailors who'd rather swim than climb aboard… This."

The boat groans and something creaks loudly under our feet. We wait a moment, then I quip, "We might just need to do that very soon…"

He looks away from the deck and back at me, "Do what?"

"Swim."

His scoff is not convincing, I meant that as a joke, but Turner seems to actually agree with me.

Demetrius arrives from the left, which means he was somewhere on the front of the ship. He's fully suited up and has guns in both hands. One's a Retro Lancer, the other is a rather well kept civilian hunting rifle. He hands me the rifle, then fetches a black tank top from his pack, reaching back and pulling it out without even a glance to his backpack.

I prop the gun against our fine vessel's railing and carefully slip the top on. It hurts, but the pain I feel seems to have reached a plateau, it can't get any worse no matter how much I twist around.

Just one spare magazine for my rifle, ammo is short, so I get eight rounds in total, but that's a predator hunting rifle, if I can get a good scope, it could be a decent substitute to a longshot.

"You sure Kleiner won't need it?" Demetrius shakes his head and leaves.

I turn to the LT, who doesn't look at me. His gaze is lost in the waves. Seems like he's not ready to talk about it, so I pick up and inspect the rifle.

The body is wooden, a rare thing these days, and it's well kept, which is rarer still. The cheek rest was replaced some time ago, but the owner only had leather at hand, so it's got what must be the only stuffed leather cheek rest in existence. The sights are another story, three gleaming red dots on dull metal, perfectly centered…

I rock the whole process of chambering a round and a faint smell of oil and metal reaches my nostrils.

Decidedly, whoever Demetrius got that gun from was very attached to it…

Only man I know takes care of his gear like that is Stefan Kleiner, and he wouldn't let me touch his shit, not in a million years.

"Kleiner's dead, then?" I ask the LT, slinging the weapon on my intact arm.

Turner nods once. "Thought he could snap a shot faster than the other guy…"

I'd like to say something nice about Kleiner, that he was brave or skilled or, at least, died well, but I can't even recall his face, don't want to. I knew from the day we met he'd get killed eventually; same goes for all of my squad. Maybe if they were somehow interesting, like the Lieutenant and Bear, complex individuals with dreams and free thoughts, I'd bother to know them but…

"Kleiner died ten years ago…" The Lieutenant slumps over the railing some more, the world weighting even more on his shoulder. He hold a tarnished photograph in his hand. "He died when she did."

The picture shows a man, vibrant, joyful, his eyes sparkling and his arm wrapped around a bashful looking young girl. Not a fiancé, no way, that girl must have still been in high school. She has blue straits in her brown hairs and a piercing in her lower lip.

They have the same mouth. Father and daughter…

Kleiner had a daughter. Fuck… How long did I know the man? About five years ago, I was getting kicked out of Two-Six RTI, spent four years in college before being conscripted again just as they were going to sink Jacinto, they threw me in Omega, under Lieutenant Turner, as a designated marksman, because that's the first designation they could think of… So, fourteen months.

Fourteen months I've known Kleiner, at no point was I ever close to knowing the man…

The Lieutenant lets go of the photograph and it flies away in the dusk.

Turner would die for every last of his men, he'd die for me, if given the opportunity. I wouldn't return the favour. Does that make me better or worse?

Maybe I wouldn't be such a coward if I had something tangible to fight for… Something more than ideology.

Maybe I should start giving a shit about the people who'd die to protect me.

"Hey… Boss…" Turner turns to me, something in my voice clearly has him puzzled. How am I supposed to say 'Sorry I was a douchebag up until this very point'? "Sorry I was a…"

Everything goes dark and my ears are ringing. Did I just faint? The boat's still rocking underneath my feet, so…

Blood smears across my cheeks as I wipe it from my eyes. The LT is nowhere to be seen, but the blood isn't mine, I'm sure of that.

Something whistles by; Lancer round.

"We're being fired on!" I roar, ducking into the cabin I just left. Laki jumps awake and looks around, her visor betraying no emotion but panic showing in her body language.

She pulls a Gnasher from the rucksack she used as pillow and takes position by my side as I lean forward for a peek.

"Good to see you on your feet…" Is all she says to me.

There's already a round chambered in my gun, so when I spot the black ship coming at ours from the left, the front, I pop out of cover, line up something vaguely human and squeeze the trigger.¸

Don't know if I hit something, but it drops out of sight.

Some more gunfire erupts from the enemy ship, answered in kind by the troops on ours. I line up my sights with an enemy muzzle flash and loose another bullet, putting an abrupt end to the flicker, like one blows a candle.

Funny, isn't it, that killing a man is no harder than smothering a candle.

The ship closes in on ours like it wants to drop by and say hi, and there's not much I can do about it except give hell to the shooters on its deck.

Soon enough, I'm down to my second mag, but they're close enough that I can see the pink mist when I deliver a face-full of fuck you.

Three shots. Mac calls dry, followed by one of the new kids who's name I never got around to learning.

Our ship is shaken so hard I end up sitting on the ceiling for a few seconds, before slamming back on the stairs.

"We're being boarded!" Bear is somewhere to the right, stating the obvious.

Their ship is bigger than ours, so they just jump the meter and a half difference. Stranded, pirates, corsairs. Fucking humans.

One drops in front of me, he has only a machete, made out of a lawn mower's blade.

He swings downward, his face hidden by a hockey mask, and I catch his wrist without a second thought.

The dude is strong, so am I, but I'm injured and the machete inches ever closer to my face as my damaged muscles scream for a respite.

There it comes again, terror, cold and sharp, in my guts, up my throat. I can already picture the blade cutting through my flesh, severing sinews…

Fight or flight… My body picks flight.

When my legs give, I think my own instinct failed me, but then I realize I've got a knee on the dude's chest and we're falling backward in slow motion.

The Stranded is pulled into the cabin and I kick him with all I've got.

Fight or flight. How many preys you know of send their predator flying?

If his close encounter with a metal wall didn't kill the poor bastard, Laki's point blank shotgun discharge in the back must have done the trick.

Someone on a loudspeaker tells us to lay down our weapons, otherwise they'll just pull away and blast us with their artillery gun.

It's a woman speaking. In other circumstances, I'd say she has a sexy voice, but now she's the enemy…

And the boss.

Oh, not that I plan to do what she's asking, but she just gave me my two mission objectives; Fuck up their big gun, fuck up their engine and, if the opportunity presents itself, fuck their Captain.

I mean, fuck _up_ their Captain.

The Stranded won't need his machete anymore, so I take it, wink at Laki, who doesn't seem to understand what I'm thinking, and off we go doing something stupid.

We being me alone, because Laki doesn't follow me on the pirate ship, though she's quite vocal about what she thinks of my plan.

The enemy ship is not so large when there's a dozen armed guys trying to gun you down.

Their canon is an old howitzer, guarded by two hostiles, to the right. To the left is the bridge, atop whatever it is old tankers like this cram between the deck and bridge. I'm not big on ships.

The Stranded try to shoot at me, but they're shit shots and in such close quarters –the farthest hostile is taking cover behind a bulkhead to the left, close enough for me to guess how long he's gone without shaving- that they are as likely to shoot each other as they are to hit me.

It takes some kid braining his girlfriend for them to cease fire. I wasn't even in cover, just leaning down clutching my wounds for a moment. The machete in my good hand, I cut the kid's cries of anguish short.

They see me bee-lining for the howitzer and all come after my ass with chainsaws revving, loud enough that they can't warn anyone over radio. Didn't plan this one, but it suits me well.

The guard on the left opens fire, apparently not all that bothered by friendly fire, and that gripping panic hiccups once again, turning my bones to jelly and, before I know it, I'm on my knees, the armoured pads of my suit sparkling against the ship's metal deck as I somehow keep moving forward.

I actually make it right next to the dude without getting hit once, so I slash wildly at his legs and push myself back up, the roar of a chainsaw on the right reminding me I've got two assholes to contend with.

An upward swing eviscerate the unarmoured Stranded like a stock pig, causing him to drop his weapon just as he was about to swing, with gruesome outcomes for his face.

Turning back to the dead guy's friend, I find him missing a leg, trying to crawl away. He gets a machete in the back of his head on general principle.

There were two more hostiles chasing me, but two-face over here seems to have taken care of that as he tried to gun me down. I can't tell if they're both dead or just in cover, but hey, I'm not picky.

Now, how do you sabotage a big ass artillery gun when you've got only fifteen seconds to spare?

Put a shell upside down in the bore? Too long.

Chainsaw the shit of the barrel? Don't be ridiculous.

The issue here isn't this thing shooting, it can shoot all it wants as far as I'm concerned, just not at my friends.

Targeting systems. Well, if you can call a crank and two lever _targeting systems_. All I need to do is fuck those up… Speaking of which, there might be a way to kill three birds with one frag grenade…

I roll the crank as fast as possible and the gun lazily turns around. Someone is shooting at me, but I don't have time to indulge such childish antics and keep turning the massive fuck-off gun until it's pointed straight at the bridge. There are silhouettes up there…

There were silhouettes up there, they all scurried away two seconds after realizing what I was up to.

The voice returns, again over loudspeakers, "Hey, asshole, on the gun!" It calls.

"Yeah?!" I scream back, though I know she can't hear me.

"I got a deal for you!"

I load a shell in the canon, smiling, and yell back, "So do I! It's called _100lb HEAT_!"

But the thing is, I've got no clue how to fire that thing. I'm still trying to figure it out when the offer comes.

"We let your friends leave, you guys haven't got shit anyhow, and you don't pull that trigger!"

There are Pirates coming out of every crevice now, but they're all straight ahead, unable to get a good shot, very much pissed and…

Scared shitless.

I'm not some bothersome victim, I'm the grim fucking reaper as far as they're concerned, they expected fishermen and now there's a dude built like a truck manning their big ass gun. These are civilians, untrained, soft, and I'm a Commando.

Why was I so fucking scared? This situation is mine, I own every second, what happens next is mine to decide.

I am in control.

"You've got a deal!" Of course I realize that means I'm stuck on this boat, but you just watch, those assholes will be giving me a lift and they'll be thankful for it.

That or I'll kill every last one of them with their own hip bones.


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: ShadowCub: Funny you'd say that at precisely this moment of the story xD**

I watch our boat scurry away with no emotion whatsoever. I should be scared, these are bad odds for me; I'm injured, armed for sure, but a shootout would not go in my favour right now, not with that many pirates pointing guns at me.

So I wait until our ship is decidedly out of range then use my machete to remove the howitzer's crank, which I promptly throw off board. They can still use the levers to aim up and down, but the gun is pointed straight at their bridge and it's not moving any time soon.

Then, I throw my machete aside, un-shoulder the hunting rifle and step out in the open.

This causes the Stranded to stop moving for a moment, as they analyze what the fuck it is I'm doing.

They get a good look at me, at my bandages and what must be a very worn out face, and they understand. A cripple just stepped on their ship, killed a couple of their friends and messed up their favourite toy.

Even the Locusts never hated me that much, but those pirates can't do anything just yet, they must wait for their master to let them off their leash.

And there she comes, the Queen Bitch of this kennel. Six feet tall, soft features contrasting with dark eyes surmounted by a crown of raven hairs kept above shoulder height.

Nobody moves, nobody talks. All we hear is the swooshing of waves against the hull and the pounding of combat boots on metal.

Close enough for me to lick her nose should I suddenly blow a gasket, she speaks with an accent I can't place and keeps her anger in check so that none of it seeps in her words, "This is it? I thought you would be…" Her nose wrinkles in annoyance as she searches for the right words.

I'm reminded of Laki, of how I could not smell anything through the airtight suit she wears all the time. That Captain wears no such suit; I smell sweat, salt, a faint scent of apples in her breath and the unmistakable aroma of cordite dominates the whole.

"Taller?" I offer, helpfully.

She shakes her head, "No… I thought you'd be… Competent. Seems like you are simply lucky. Shame."

Before I can ask, something explodes. Not on the ship, not really. Pain, flaring right up my spine and back down to the bullet wound two inches above my left ankle. The shattered bone fails to hold my weight and I fall forward like a dead pine tree.

The Captain gracefully steps out of the way and rolls me over. Something is blaring, an alarm?

No, it's just me screaming. She shoves her Boltok pistol in my mouth and the screaming stops.

Her smile is sweet, inviting. I'd totally be hitting on her had she not just shattered my goddamned tibia!

I try to call her a bitch, but I've got a massive handgun in my mouth and it comes out as "Hoo huhin' hitch!"

If she understands what I'm saying, she doesn't show it, instead turning to one of her subordinates, her finger still on the trigger. "Get these corpses off my ship," the Captain orders before finally pulling the gun out of my mouth, "and throw this shit-stain to the sharks as well."

I'm a little busy being in utter, unbearable pain… Well, actually, it's not that unbearable, but let's just say my connection to reality just got flimsier and I can't do a thing but watch as two men, both smelling of alcohol and shit, drag me away towards the tanker's railing, towards the sea.

From here, all I see is water, an orange mass mirroring the setting sun. The coast is in the opposite direction, quite far away from what I recall…

One of them wraps his fingers around the bites on my forearm and the sensation, like dipping your hands in boiling water, snaps me back to the here and now.

I only get enough time to yell out, "Name's Devon, bitch! Remember it, I'll be seein' you very soo-" and I'm thrown backward into the cold darkness. For just a moment, I think that's actually the water and decide it wasn't so bad.

Then I hit the water like a freight train rams into a granite wall. Everything hurts, knives run along my flesh, a thousand sunburns miraculously appear all over my body, there's a toothache-like pain shooting across my whole bone structure and now I can't fucking breathe!

And then I can. I'm not swimming, not flailing around, and yet here I am, shoulders above the water, kept afloat by… My butt?

The Onyx suit. I still have the pants on. No power source, a gaping hole near the ankle and those fucking trousers still save my life. Maybe it's intended, or maybe it's all that self-sealing medical foam shit that's keeping it afloat, I don't know and I don't care.

Corpses surround me, the least fucked up is the one I skull-fucked with a machete, so I paddle over to that one.

All the stranded had was a plate carrier vest, no armour plates, just a shit-load of pouches, all emptied by his pals already.

I still take it, wrestling the limp body for its last possession.

Without a glance to the pirate ship, I begin swimming with one leg dragging behind like a lure.

Behind me, the corpse I just left is gone, either it sank or something ate it.

Sharks. Perfect, as if I wasn't close enough to hyperventilation as it is! Swimming faster is hard, and it hurts, but I do my best nonetheless.

I'm bleeding all over, from my leg, from my arm, from my back, this is just ridiculous. How far is the coast? A full kilometer? More? All I see from here is water and, whenever a wave carries me high enough, hints of green and white lost in the now pitch black sky.

So I swim. There's a bothersome voice in the back of my head that say I look like an injured animal and that will attract predators, but, really, I _am_ an injured animal and all I've got going for me is the adrenaline rush.

I'm not panicking. My insides are frozen in terror, but my mind seems to work fine, which is already something. Maybe it's Laki's influence, but I've been feeling more… Safe? More confident? Any way you want to say it, I don't lose my shit nearly as often since we stepped off that Locust torture barge.

I'm about to lose it now, it's there, lingering in the back of my mind, waiting for the worst possible moment to fuck me over, but so far so good.

_So far so good._ When are you ever going to hear that from a man with a gunshot in the leg, severe lacerations all over his body and sharks following him like flies?

It's simple, really, when things get desperate. Sure you're scared, you want to go home, you can even try to convince yourself that you actually are home, I know I've done that plenty of times, but one thing such situations have going for them, their appeal, so to speak, is that there is only one possible course of action, your path is set, cleanly cut and all you need to do is move forward until it's over.

My path is straight ahead, towards the Deadlands and, hopefully, civilisation.

The closer I get, however, the more obvious it becomes; this isn't the mainland, there's foliage beyond that beach. That means an island, that means no civilisation for me until I figure out a way back to the mainland.

Of course, if I get my ass snatched by a shark before even getting to that island, it won't matter much.

Something moves right under me, I can feel disturbances in the water, but whatever it is doesn't try to get a bite.

For now.

The disturbances come back, on the right, closer. Something brushes against my chest, something small, but it goes away before I can figure out if it's a fish or the tip of a shark's tail.

I swim harder.

My left side is bleeding all over, I should not be surprise it's where I get hit first. The shark's nose smashes into my stomach and suddenly sky and sea are a spinning blur of black, then I am once again engulfed by the sea.

In the night, I can't see much, only shades of black.

I lost the beach.

It was right fucking there, so close I could have sent a distress message to anyone standing there by wiggling my eyebrows!

Rising crests of ink obscure everything, I should not be amazed I got lost…

The shark failed to bite off anything, fortunately, but you can bet it's coming back and now I don't know where I'm meant to go.

What would Mataki tell me?

Likely, _I'm too old for this shit, you got yourself in this mess, sort it out!_

Thanks, Bernie.

If only there was a moon or something! This sky is giving me nothing, not even stars, this is bullshit! Why can't I at least see the moon through clouds?

No moon… What day is it? I've been out for a while, no way to know, but no moon means…

Low tide. Low tide means I'm being drawn away from the mainland. I'm utterly fucked…

Something hits my injured leg and this time gets a good hold, forcing out all color from my vision as a thousand fire ants bite their way up my leg and spine.

Then, there's nothing, I'm no longer there, and when I come back, my head is underwater, something is clutching my ankle and excruciating tremors travel up my bones.

Not a shark, these things are far too savage to drown their prey, this has to be a croc… Does my luck know no end?

Leaning forward increases the agony tenfold and I fade out again, only coming back when my body realizes it's about to drown.

Consciousness is a precious gift and I make the most of it, reaching out to my adversary, looking for eyes to gouge.

No eyes. No teeth. No scales. Why?

It's a fucking rock! A V-shaped chunk of stone. I just need to pull myself back slightly to free my useless carcass. I immediately rise what must be a single feet before breaking the surface and drinking in delicious oxygen.

Breathing is now my new favourite activity.

Now, flash quiz; how fucking lucky do you have to be to almost be drowned by a rock while out at sea?

Answer: Very.

One last breath and I'm back underwater, eyes wide open though there's nothing to see down here. I grab the V-rock and reach out ahead. Another rock. I pull, but it's too easy, so I spin around and begin heading upstream, struggling against the tide in my first underwater horizontal free climbing experience.

Don't ask me why, but I begin humming an old tune I barely remember, something about not bowing, not dying, never giving up and biting into life until someone pries me away with a crowbar.

Basically, so long as I've got two functional limbs, you're not keeping me down, bitch. I rise for air and dive back. The irony is not lost on me.

**Alright, I studied the Gears Of War timeline and came up with a full backstory for Devon's military career, which, as it turns out, was all about "Hurry up and wait." So I guess I got it right. I'll keep revealing it through monologue from now on, same goes for his relationship with Bernie Mataki, Clay Carmine and Victor Hoffman.**


	12. Chapter 12

I am awakened by the soft stroke of sunlight on my face. I'm in this lucid state that comes when your brain hasn't fully started up yet, when your body keeps quiet yet you are aware of what is happening,

The sand is warm, comfortable. I'd stay here forever if I could, but I can't, and so I sit up and take stocks.

The LT wasn't joking, Laki's stuff fixed my wounds pretty good, as I can see now that the bandages are all loose and shit. The Bloodmounts gnawed my forearm, that's undeniable, but all that's left are skin deep bite marks and lumps of frozen blood.

The same can't be said about my leg; the wound is rather clean, it's hardly bleeding, but I can see splintered bones through the thumb-sized hole, and my foot is bent inward in an unnatural fashion.

Getting up finally kicks my senses awake and a dull pain soon radiates across my body. There is no heroic willpower, no chance at overcoming the weaknesses of my body with the power of my mind; I just fall and the sand cushions the impact.

The beach spreads thirty meters ahead before disappearing in the sea. To my right, it barely goes three meters before being overcome by salt water, the island proper spreads on the left, beyond an impenetrable wall of pine trees and roots, twenty meters away.

How the hell am I supposed to get there? And once I do, how am I meant to move through all this shit with a busted leg?

I need a crutch… Some bit of fossilized wood, halfway between the treeline and I, seems like it would do just fine, I only need to crawl up to it.

Everything's relative, I used to think my lacerated arm hurt, but now that I've got a shattered leg, it's really not so bad, even though my eyes are filling with water and every step takes as much effort as intentionally licking the oven's stove would.

I now have the undeniable proof that there is a god. Nature would never be so cruel as to create pain receptors, and furthermore, the presence of a higher power would explain why I'm still alive.

It knows that as soon as I pass away, I'm coming for its ass.

Reaching the goddamn stick, I pick it up, lean on it and pull myself up. Don't ask me how I manage to get off the beach and in the woods, the pain just wipes the whole experience from my mind. When I retrieve some semblance of sanity, I'm hopping forward in the shadow of this mixt forest.

There are flowers here, flowers with one row of white petals and a yellow center, nothing fancy, but that means someone's been here, this island has been inhabited in the past, as flowers don't grow in virgin forests.

I therefore follow the white and yellow path, making my way forward with relative ease now.

I don't find civilisation, civilisation finds me in the form of a massive black dog wandering my way absentmindedly.

When it sees me, the hairs of its back stand up, its ears flatten and it immediately shows me some very pointy fangs.

It's a wolfhound, the kind of dog bred to kill wolves… This one is so black it looks blue, though its eyes really are sky blue.

It growls and I groan. Give me a break, "Seriously? Can't I ever get a fucking break?"

The dog sizes me up, licks its lips and relaxes a bit. As it does, I realize it's thinking the exact same thing. Those eyes of his, because I can tell it's a male, are not blue, they're green, only cataract makes them look blue, its mouth is surrounded by silver strands and you can tell the weight of too many years burden the poor beast.

"It's okay, old boy," I then call, a mutual understanding quickly achieved between the two of us, "I'm one of the good guys."

The words, or the calm tone they are spoken in, soothes the animal even more and it finally gathers the nerves to move closer, tail tucked between its legs and nostrils flailing.

I hold out my hand and it carefully analyze my scent, its wet truffle rubbing against my skin softly… Then it wags its tail and licks my fingers with enthusiasm.

I rub its ears with my free hand and the dog stretches its neck in delight, its hind leg beating the ground spastically.

"So where's your master, boy?" It does not understand what I'm saying, even if it could, it's way too focused on getting its ear rubbed to pay any attention to me. Well, I'm glad to have found someone who's not out to get me, but I need treatment and a way off this island, so there's no time to waste anymore.

The dog follows me and I follow the flowers, which sounds like a children's tale.

It only gets worst after I reach the end of the white and yellow path; there's a hut there, not even in a clearing, a tree's growing out the middle and grass has invaded the whole roof.

There are flowers too, growing in every ray of sunlight they could find, and a thin stream trickles around the house, following a path of moss-covered granite pebbles. The front door doesn't creak, it just falls off its hinges. Inside, I find rusted sculpting tools, a rotten table with matching chairs and what remains of a wooden bed.

The mattress has vanished, eaten a long time ago by mites and maggots, same as the corpse of a human male who expired on that bed.

The blackened skeleton doesn't tell me much, but the hut itself does.

This guy was one of those eco-friendly, anti-war, anti-food people, an artist, or so he thought, who decided to exile himself from society.

I see no signs of injury on the bones, this dude likely died of old age…

And his dog has been guarding this hut ever since.

Looking on the floor, I find a round spot that isn't quite as dirty as everything else. If this was a dog bed, it was too small for the big mutt watching me from the doorframe. That dog was likely born here, or bought at a very young age, early enough to become very loyal. The man would have built his pet a bigger bed if he'd lived to see it at its current size, so he died before the dog reached adulthood.

Six months, top, after getting this dog, the man died… Might have been a terminal case, but why bother buying a dog and exiling yourself if you know you won't live to take care of it?

In any event, this breed of dog rarely lives more than ten years, so this guy got here after E-Day.

I look around the hut, but he obviously didn't bring any means of communication. That doesn't mean I'm giving up, the team will be looking for me, all I need to do is make my position known, and there's tons of flammable shit in here.

Starting with the table and chairs. I use a rusted P-shaped chisel to break everything into pieces I can carry outside and, once I've got a decent pile, stuff it with dry moss I scrape off trees and rocks.

Getting a spark is easy when you've got a hut full of metal objects, I just rasp a file against the chisel like one sharpens a knife. Of course, it doesn't work right away and I eventually sit down to romantically rub these two rusted items together until they give birth to progress…

Commando training says you should wait until it's dark to light a distress fire, makes it easier to be spotted from the air, but that was back when we had King Ravens all over the place. Now, if I want to be seen, I need them to spot the smoke, which they have more chances of doing in broad daylight.


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N: Gavoon: Yeah, thanks for the heads up xD That one completely slipped by me.**

**So, this is getting darker, do you guys think I should give this M rating?**

The man is massive, like those trashball players from before E-Day, and he's holding a 4x4 wooden beam at his side. I sit up, rub the sleep out of my eyes and look around.

Four guys, all standing around the fire in silence. Well, relative silence; the smallest of the group, an obvious meth addict, keeps giggling like an enamoured schoolgirl. Trying to get up is pointless, my leg is swollen to twice its normal size and utterly irresponsive. The big guy doesn't say a word, but I see disgust in his face as he takes in my injury.

"I've had a shit day." I admit with a thin smile, propping myself on my elbows. They aren't COG, but then that doesn't mean they're pirates, if they wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already.

The man finally speaks, with that low drawn out accent southerners tend to have, "'There anyone else on this island?"

I shrug, "Fucked if I know, I haven't seen more than this shack…" It takes me a second to understand he's asking me if I'm alone. You should always be vague when answering this kind of question. I wasn't vague here, it's obvious I'm alone.

It takes the big guy just a bit longer to reach that conclusion as well and barely a heartbeat to smack my face with that wooden beam of his.

Consciousness seems to only flicker behind my eyes, but as it does, I go from sitting by the fire to leaning against the hut's outer wall, facing the fire still. One major difference is in the way I'm weighting down on my arms. Before, my mass was pushing down on both elbows, now it's pulling down on my left wrist.

I'm handcuffed to an iron ring hammered straight into the shack's wall. A few tugs tell me it's no use trying to pull it out. Tugging harder makes the cuts on my arm burn like hell, so I give it up. The lacerated wrist is swollen and purple, and it smells horrible. I can barely move my fingers…

It's over. My arm is fucked, my leg is fucked and, though I'm no doctor, it seems like gangrene is setting in. End of the line for Devon Carmine.

Two men walk out of the shack, drunk or stoned, I don't know which, but they certainly don't walk straight. One, the emaciated junky that keeps giggling, comes straight to me, holding a can of lighter fuel, while the other sits by the fire.

"Hehe… You wanna… You wanna try this s-s-stuff?" He offers, holding out the can.

"Not really…" What is this, high-school?

He giggles, takes a sniff from the can and I lean forward to see what the other guy is doing by the fire.

Before I know it, I've got a plastic pin up my nose and hydrocarbons are filling my sinuses, knocking the whole world aside like an earthquake. Colors get fuzzy, everything smells wrong and there's a gnome with a jackhammer trying to leave my skull.

I see the other dude come at me with a white hot chisel, but the closer he gets, the more versions of him I see, so I feebly swing my fist at them all, only to get a mouthful of blood and rubber from the junky's boot.

They grab my right arm and hold it firmly. What can they possibly want? They haven't asked me a single question yet!

Whatever they want to know, I'm telling them. Fuck it, it's not like I've got anything to hide anyhow.

"Seriously, guys!" I call, my voice surprisingly clear, given the circumstances, "I'll talk, you just need to ask, I'll tell you whatever you want to know, just don't hurt…" It's cold at first, then it bubbles, like peroxide in a bad wound, and only then does it burn.

The guy moves his chisel like an artist moves a brush, searing the flesh of my arm, causing tendons to spasm and muscles to snap like rubber bands. I trash, try to pull away, but they're too strong, so I try screaming at the top of my lungs.

That brings the other two out of the shack. The big dude looks our way with disgust and I'm relieved to see him quickly walking our way.

Finally! He's going to pull those sadists off of me, ask me a few questions and I'll be glad to answer!

These are people, like me, they're just scared, doing stupid shit, they'll see reason and…

The big guy, my hope and salvation, squats in front of me and, without further ado, punches me in the mouth, splitting my already split lip even further. "Shut the fuck up!" He roars. He has to do it three times before I understand.

He then turn his attention to my right bicep, to what I think is my tattoo but quickly realize is a bright red depiction of a human penis seared in my flesh where Anthony's tombstone used to be.

The balls now cover the B, s and d from _Brothers to the End._

"You fucking animals!" Seems to be the most accurate way to express the pure rage that floods my veins at that moment. I lash out at the big man. The junky was sitting on my forearms and is thrown a meter back, laughing as he goes.

My fingers wrap around the man's throat, squeezing hard and holding on despite the massive man's attempts to pry me away. He punches me again, catching me in the cheek, then in the forehead and once on the chin, but there's a direct line of furor between the fingers on that hand and my brain. He knocks my lights out for a few seconds, causes one ear to ring and copper to fill my nose, but I don't let go.

The junky forces another puff of lighter gas in my nose and that does the trick. Next thing I know, the giant fucker is stomping on my broken leg and the others are pretty much kicking the shit out of me, but all I really feel is the pounding this guy's giving my leg.

It's not crunching, not breaking further, so to speak. I could see bone splinters earlier and assumed this to be an open fracture, but it's not, the bone is just clipped. That means I'll walk in a month, if I can disinfect and support that leg.

I don't know how long they spend beating me up. When lights come back, it's night, the fire is nothing but yellowish ambers and there's a slice of bread and raw rabbit meat on the dirt next to me.

I touch none of it. I try to sleep, but the pain from my leg and worrying lack of feeling from my fingers keep me awake.

The next day, the junky's friend, an average dark skinned Tyran, brings me water in a wooden bowl. I don't drink it, instead pulling a fist-full of moss from the ground and sucking moisture from it. It's edible, I recall from my commando training, so I eat it next and grab another serving until the ground around me is bared of any kind of moss.

I spend the whole morning alone, then big guy and junky leave the shack, heading for the beach, and I call, "What the fuck do you want from me?!"

They ignore me, disappearing through the trees without a word.

Time doesn't mean shit to me now. Maybe I spend ten minutes pulling and pushing at that iron ring, or maybe I spend all day, it certainly feels like the latter, but someone eventually takes notice of my rotting carcass. The fourth little fucker is a blond haired, blue eyed pretty-boy old enough to be in high-school and with the cruel mind that would make him the same kind of bullies Anthony and I had to contend with when we were in school.

I hate him right away, even more so when he comes out of the shack with a set of pliers and a wide grin.

I don't scream as he pulls out my pinky finger's nail, which seems to disappoint him, so he pulls off the boot on my injured leg. I groan, but that's it, so he pulls the socks off and grabs a solid hold of my foot.

Don't know why he bothers, I can't even move that leg.

Looking me straight in the eye, smiling, he delicately grabs the tip of my toenail, the smallest one, and slowly pulls it upward. At first, it tickles, but soon enough, it starts sending alarm signals up the messed up bones and into my spine. All I can do is clench my teeth and watch as the nail goes white, then blue, followed by purple and finally red before coming off.

It's like hitting your feet on a doorway in the dark, only tenfold.

He does it with the next toe, but I don't give him what he wants and he eventually gives up.

When the other two come back, shortly before dark, they see the untouched food next to me and declare I'm not getting anything until I eat this shit.

I tell them to go fuck themselves right up the ass and earn a noseful of gas for my trouble.

It goes on like that for a long while, they come out, beat me up, gas me, tell me to eat and beat me up again when I say no.

They shave my hair because they think I give a shit. The junky keeps asking my who Tony and Ben were, if they were my boyfriends, if they did me up the ass, and when I try to punch his face in, he calls his friends over and they carve obscenities in my arm. One tried to do it on my face.

That day, I get more proteins than usual.

It all melts into a thick bubble of pain and impotent anger until I take another look at my food one night.

The rabbit is crawling with maggots, the bread is aquamarine green and smells rather strongly and the water has mosquito larvae floating around.

Whatever the four little bitches put in my food didn't affect those guys. I pluck a grub from the rabbit meat. It wiggles around, its white skin sticking to my fingers as its tiny brown head pulls in and out of it like a confused turtle.

I might be delirious at this point, but I'd swear that grub tastes like chicken. The others taste more like butter, very greasy, wiggly butter that tries to hook itself in your throat when you swallow it. The larvae aren't as nourishing, but they go down easily. Only then do I realize how hungry I was, because now my body thinks there's food and it wants more.

There isn't more, though. The bread, I rub against my injured leg because both are rotting anyway, right? Maybe there's logic in what I'm doing, I feel like there is, but if someone were to ask me what it is, I'd only shrug and go back to watching that very hungry, very careful rat over there.

It may have been five minutes since I ate all the grubs, or it could have been hours. Once again, it feels like the latter, but either way, after I spend some time motionless, a brown rat emerges from the darkness, stepping carefully towards the discarded piece of rotten rabbit meat.

I don't need to do a thing; it kills itself eating the poisoned meat.

Of course, I don't have a knife or anything to skin the rat, let alone cook it, but hunger overrides all of that. I just pick up the tiny body and tear into it with my bare teeth.

It's good.

Tastes like chicken.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Quick christmas update, will proof read later, merry holidays! **

The next day, they think I actually ate the bread, they think it's hilarious.

"Right!" junky laughs, "Yo-you like r-r-rotten shit!"

I don't have the energy to tell him to fuck off. My leg still smells like a corpse, only now it's got green bits mixed in and I feel like I've got a flu coming, but it seems to me like the swelling has receded a bit, and I can actually feel my fingers now.

Blondie finds the dead rat and shows it to the others with puzzlement , "Hey, you guys seen a cat around here?"

Cat meat is better that rat meat, I know, I've tried both now.

Big guy shakes his head, sitting by the fire to throw some logs in it, "Nah, there was a mutt, but it ran off."

Blondie joins him, throwing the carcass into the rejuvenated flames. They eat breakfast in the shack and I listen to every word.

"What the fuck are we going to do with COG-boy?" Goes the dark skinned man, his mouth obviously half-full, "You said he'd be dead already!"

Big guy takes a while to answer, probably because he has manners and won't speak with his mouth full. "Fucker should have stayed off our turf, who cares if he dies?"

That wasn't the other dude's question, but I'm starting to notice my captors aren't quite the brightest minds Sera has to offer.

I'm older than all of them by at least five years, and I'm not that old, maybe thirty-two, thirty-four top, these guys were in their early teens during E-day, Blondie and Junky were probably barely old enough to walk, whereas I was starting the long and paperwork-intensive process of joining the army.

"D-d-do you t-think he… he has friends l-l-looking for him?" Speaking of the drug addled wolf…

Blondie scoffs at the thought, "So what? You scared of a couple soldier boys?"

"I a-a-ain't s-s-s-scared!" The other gets off his chair, ready to prove his point with his fists, but Big guy calms the game with one growl.

"Shut up, both of you!"

He's the one in charge, that's obvious, but his authority isn't absolute, as the junky, once he returns to his place, stutters "I ain't af-f-fraid of no soldier b-boy!"

The cuts on my arm were only skin deep, so the infection was nowhere near as severe as the one in my leg. Was, it's gone now, I know it is because the cuff on that wrist used to bite into my wrist, but it's kind of loose now.

Blondie scoffs, "Just 'cause this one's a pussy don't mean they all are…"

Perhaps I could break free, but I'm fucked up beyond any hope of taking all four of them head on, so I wait. The junky, eager to prove he's not afraid of Gears, walks up to me and casually stomps my stomach before punching me in the face a couple times. It doesn't do much damage, he hits like a girl and I'd notify him of that fact in any other circumstances, only right now I want them to pay as little attention to me as possible.

"Pfft," goes the big guy, looking away, bored, "taking it like an obedient bitch…"

Junky gets off me and back to the fire. He hurt his hand, just a bruise, but acts as though it's broken. This opens my eyes on something else; they don't know pain. I thought they did, but they inflict suffering upon others without truly understanding their actions because they've never experienced it themselves… They're children, not monsters.

There is a monster here, it's not a Locust, not a Lambent; it's far worse, and the chains holding it just got shaken loose. I'll let them think they've broken me, let them lower their guard, then I'll show them the monster.

Big guy gets back inside while Blondie and the dark skinned asshole head for the eastern beach. Junky stays by the fire, inhaling hydrocarbons every ten seconds.

Odds aren't in my favour, I'm not stupid enough to think otherwise, but I have Commando training, which means, or, well, implies aptitude with a blade and survival going beyond that of most grunts. Bottom line: I must take this fight to the woods, force them to hunt me down, only then can I take the upper hand.

First, I will need mobility. Ain't no frolicking around in the woods with my busted leg, not unless I get some kind of clutch. Second, I need camouflage, but the black tank top and armour pants are the only clothes available.

The answer to both issues is slowly suffocating a few paces ahead. Those assholes can't do anything right, not even maintain a camp fire. They threw wet logs in without anything dry to burn in the meantime. That might work, if you shape the fire in such a way as to focus as much heat on the new logs as possible, dry them up before the old wood runs out, but these guys just threw it all randomly. It'll burn for a few more hours, until just after night time, if I'm lucky… All I need to do now is wait and save my strength.

With that thought, a conscious and deliberate effort, I put the useless parts of my mind to sleep. Dolphins can do that on a literal level, shut off sections of their mind so they are never fully asleep. Humans can't do that, not on the biological level, but we have such things as meditation and hypnosis. I have not the slightest clue which of those it is I'm doing, but I am neither awake nor asleep.

Time feels trivial, but it flows and I am aware that it does. Sleepers have no concept of time. Though my eyes are closed, I feel the sun moving through the canopy, feel every tree trunk and branch as it casts a shadow on my bloodied carcass. By the time Junky gets bored of his gasoline can, I've mentally mapped all of the eastern and southern treeline. There are two breaches in the foliage, about five minutes-wide, to the south, in addition to the main path, on the east, which is one hour wide.

Not sure how far off they are, though, and that might be an issue if I need to run in complete darkness. I'm a monster, not a math whiz.

Judging from the smell, Junky gets close to me before changing his mind and vanishing north. His footsteps echo through the trees for half a minute before becoming muffles by the waves.

When Blondie and his boyfriend left, I heard their steps for about twice as long. Might be that the water is closer on the northern edge than it is on the east… Both my escape routes are down south, but going north would ensure I reach the water sooner. East is off the table, but I'll throw a few logs that way before running away, burning logs if possible. It should buy me a few precious seconds, get them to search the wrong way.

Big guy stays in the shack all day, soon joined by Junky. Who knows what they're up to in there? The other two never show up, even after the sun's warm rays are gone, I still can't catch the slightest whiff of their particular odors, nor do I hear the sound of their steps anywhere on the island at any moment. Once the fire's warmth is gone as well, it becomes clear they're gone for the night.

Part of me thinks I should delay my escape until I know where all of them are, but that part is just scared we'll run into each other somewhere in the woods. Not a chance in hell.

My wrist slides free without any struggle, which might just be the first time in a long while the universe doesn't shit all over me. Keeping only one eye open, I push myself up, grab the discarded sock and boot and... Well, One leg is numb, the other is rotting, so _walk_ doesn't quite describe the shoving, shuffling and crawling I perform to reach the dying fire.

First thing I notice is the gasoline can. Half empty, which makes about two liters of flammable liquid at my disposal. I tie this up to my belt using the sock, then untie it and pull the belt free to tie the sock again, this time into the Kevlar belt loop in my back.

My captors have some firewood stashed on the ground, logs as well as a leftover chair leg. A thin log and the leg on either side of my ankle and with my boot back on, I wrap the belt a few time around the whole mess and pause.

Now, I'm familiar with pain, and I know every peak of suffering makes the last one seem tame, that's because our brain tries to forget traumatic experiences, so I try to recall the worse pain I've ever felt and double that for a rough idea of how much the next act is going to suck. Honestly, I'll be happy if I manage not to pass out.

On that very positive note, I tug hard at the belt, squeezing the boot shut around my splintered ankle. The loose bits of bone grind back in place, piercing muscles as they do so, and it seems blood fails to reach my brain for a moment. Next thing I know, I'm slumped straight in the fire.

On the upside, the dick drawn on my tattoo is now gone. Downside is, so's most of the tattoo. All that's left now is the top of the tombstones.

I was not out for long, barely half a second, and I'm back up just as fast. I finish the makeshift clutch around my leg and, one eye still screwed shut, pick up a smoking log that has bits of my skin seared to it.

First, I rub it on my forearm, burning away a layer of skin and all the obscenities and insults they carved in my flesh, then I throw that log to the east as far as possible before heading south, through the closest gap in the treeline.

At first, my numb legs, the gas can and the impenetrable darkness make my flight seem a foolish attempt. My bones feel made of lead and muscles of jelly, but soon I reach the trees. There, I open my other eye, this one not blinded by looking straight into the fire, and can see the outlines of trees and ferns around myself. Soon after, as I lean under low branches and vault over even lower ones, my leg recovers some of its strength. The injured one hurts, but I can put some weight on it without the feeling getting worse. I can run.

Kinda…


	15. Chapter 15

**A/N:A lot of research went into this... And I need a new lawn mower now.**

**SciFiFan96: Didn't mean to, but keeping chapters under 2000 words means I sometimes have to cut the action short...**

**no one: Not hiding; hunting... (Favourite Riddick quote, sorry)**

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><p><strong>The Next Morning.<strong>

"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Went the blond Stranded as he looked around wildly. His darker skinned companion kneeled by the wall their prisoner used to be handcuffed to and looked around calmly, using all of his tracking skills to figure out what had happened. Meanwhile, the other entered the hut to wake up everyone else. "Asshole got away!" He yelled at them, "What the fuck are you guys doing?"

The big man, not liking his morning so far, growled "What do you mean? How did the guy escape?"

"Fucked if I know, John's checking it out, now get up and get looking!" The blond man hissed, emerging from the shack a moment later, his eyes wide in apprehension.

John, now leaning over the ashes, shook his head slowly, "This is bad, Dave… If the COG finds out…"

"They won't!" Snapped his friend, "We'll find the fucker, put a bullet in his head and catch that shuttle by the end of the week…"

The man went back to searching as the others joined them, their eyelids heavy with sleep. The large man grabbed his wooden club and scanned the treeline carefully before swearing under his breath. "Is it true? They getting people off this planet, then?" He asked his companions, worry obvious in his voice.

Dave nodded, "Yeah, and we coulda been out of here tonight if you two hadn't fucked up!"

"W-w-why can't we just leave? F-f-fuck soldier boy, let's go!" Exclaimed the junky, looking around for his gas can.

"Right," said John, a fake grin on his face, "and have him ID us as soon as we get on that ship? The COG will have us shot in some backroom without giving us any kind of trial."

But the thin and nervous man did not agree and he made that clear despite his speech impediment growing with his anxiety, "I d-d-don't t-think it…It's much worse t-t-than what t…T…The UIR did to their p-p-prisonners..." his larger companion tried to object, but he had more to say, "Seriously, Rob! Can t-t-they really b-b-blame us for being up-p-pset? COG boys burned the whole p-p-planet!"

But his companions simply disregarded his words.

John got up after a moment and told everyone his finding, "Don't know how he got free, but he dragged his ass to the fire and fixed himself a clutch." He pointed to the disturbed ashes, "Then I think he removed the crap you guys drew on his arm…"

Dave blinked twice at that, "What do you mean, 'removed'?"

"Burned it off… Then ran south."

Rob, his club in hand, instantly decided to run south, towards a natural path highlighted by the morning sun. Seeing as Dave and Michael, the junky, also followed, John heaved a deep sigh and went with them.

They could see quite well in the dawn, whereas their prisoner had been forced to navigate in complete darkness, quite possibly after looking straight in a fire. Sure enough, the Gear's steps grew confused with every passing minute, he walked in circles, crawled on the ground in places, sat down in others until the group came across a hastily built makeshift shelter, barely a stick probed against a rock and covered with pine branches to protect against the cold.

John tried to tell Rob something, but the de facto leader would have none of it. He readied his club, signaled everyone to stay back and stepped forward carefully. In the five steps it took him to reach the shelter, he wondered if COG boy really was still in there. Perhaps he'd moved on... But he decided the kid was smart enough to cover his tracks and not leave such an obvious sign of his presence in the open. Besides, that bastard had to sleep sometime and the night had only just ended.

With that in mind, he raised his leg up to his chest and stomped hard on the makeshift tent.

The dead wood splintered and his foot kept going for half a meter after it should have reached the ground. Little black berries, hidden within the pine branches, rolled inward a split second before he hit the end of this hole.

It took him a whole second to feel the two wooden pikes impaling his foot and the dozens of smaller ones now stuck in his calf.

0

0

0

The scream answers my question. They can hunt.

That was not me being cruel, the spikes, I mean, it was me asking a question: "_Can you guys follow my tracks?"_

And now I know they can. It's not a bad thing, means I won't have to hunt them down and I can lure them into more traps. Sure, now they'll be careful, but they also have an injured man to drag around. A group is only as strong as its weakest link and now their weakest link has a busted leg, same as me.

So, yeah, busting his leg wasn't cruelty; dipping the spikes in _atropa belladonna_, poisonous Nightshade berries, now that was done just for shit and giggles.

We're too far north for me to find a large enough oak or maple tree and hide in it, but fir and pine trees provide tent-like cavities at the bottom of their trunks, not to mention they're ideal for building Whack-Traps.

Whack-Traps are basically branches you've sharpened or stuck pikes to and twisted all the way around the tree, securing them in place with another diagonal stick, positioned in such a way that anyone who so much as nudges it the wrong way frees the spiked branch and gets properly perforated. I've been going around the island building rudimentary Whack-Traps every odd number of steps on every path I've been able to spot in the dark.

They're obvious, though, since I didn't have time to camouflage them, so I also added a few more holes like the one in my fake shelter, to keep them on their toes.

When you build a trap, you must bear in mind your enemy won't fall in it, statistically, it's not going to work, the purpose is to keep them awake, keep them guessing so that, at the end of the day, they fall from exhaustion. That means your traps must be scary, simple and plentiful.

However, there are exceptions. For instance, I know they'll use this motor boat, the one _Dave _and _John_ rode back on and I'm now sitting in, enjoying the bag of peanuts they brought back with them. Since I know that, I can booby trap the boat in a complex manner. That's called sabotage.

First, however, I make sure there's nothing here I can use. The anchor is too heavy, but it's got a few lengths of rope I certainly will appreciate soon, even though it's bright yellow. The peanuts are in a jute sack much too big for me to carry it around comfortably, but there's a small trekking backpack on the floor, a female model. I stuffed the rope in it, along with as much nuts as I can possibly fit. They're not for me, mind you, I've eaten as much as I could here and carrying this unsealed food with me in the woods would attract unwanted attention. They're going to be bait. I will drop them along my tracks for small animals to find.

When you're on the lookout for traps, a squirrel or racoon moving out the corner of your eyes will send you screaming like a little girl.

Plus, well, squirrel meat can't be any worse than rat meat and it's bound to be more nourishing than a single peanut.

Now for the trap… Think simple, that's the key. I suck the oil out of the boat's engine using the busted water pump's intake hose. With the hose full of dark liquid and the engine now void, I jam my thumb in one end of the hose, so that it's content won't spill, and empty the gas can into the oil reservoir.

That alone won't go boom that much, but there is no paddle in this boat, and you can bet this thing's engine won't survive more than five minutes, just long enough for my dear friends to get stuck between this island and the next. As soon as they stop moving, they're bound to notice I've stolen one of the hull's two plugs, the forward one.

Voices, angry and one hurt. They're coming back.

I drop the oil in my gas can, rinse the hose a bit and carefully submerge myself. The can's already filled with rocks, so it won't float, and this hose makes for a good tuba, if a foul tasting one, so I get to watch from a mere five meters away as three of my former captors drag a fourth, the biggest, to their boat.

How cute, they think they can just take him to a hospital!

Like children, they do not understand responsibility, accountability. We all choose our own path, and face the consequences, it's the only true freedom anyone has. They are not free, not really, because they think they'll never have to answer for their actions.


End file.
